My school was six miles away from where I lived on the farm. I had to walk and run, there and back every day, through gorges and over rivers. If I was late, there was a very big stick waiting for me.
This hand is not very active always, because it was in this hand that I carried my books. My carrying hand was always my strongest. Now I think my other hand has developed more muscles from signing all those autographs.
We need the quarterbacks. It's a passing league and a quarterback-driven league. We need the Peyton Mannings in football uniforms out there playing - the Tom Bradys, the Drew Breeses, the Philip Riverses - we need those guys instead of them standing ...
It's been the video game ever since I got out of coaching. Even when I was an announcer, fewer and fewer people remembered me as 'Coach,' and as the years went on, people just started knowing me from the game.
I don't care what a man is as long as he treats me right. He can be a gambler, a hustler, someone everybody else thinks is obnoxious, I don't care so long as he's straight with me and our dealings are fair.
I think I could have become an outstanding professional baseball player, but I don't think I could have reached the heights that I have in football - being one of the very top players in the game, being a world champion.
When we won the league championship, all the married guys on the club had to thank their wives for putting up with all the stress and strain all season. I had to thank all the single broads in New York.
After my first knee operation, in January of '65 before I went to the Jets, Dr. James Nicholas told me everything went well and that I could probably play four years in the NFL. The surgery was trailblazing to a certain extent.
I think I just went into a system that was willing to utilize me and gave me opportunities and I felt fortunate to be able to go to Oakland and put the silver and black on. I wanted to prove to everybody that I could still play.
Being a reporter and chasing down an assignment isn't an easy thing to do, especially when you're dealing with athletes that are so focused and trying to get their little game plan together to perform under adverse conditions... it's tough.
To chase an athlete that really doesn't want to speak with you and when you finally get him, gives you three words and you have to write a story based on three words of information he gave you, that's pretty tough.
I've been in the league 12 years. To sit on the bench and complain about the way things were, that doesn't get anything done. I don't know. I'm playing for a championship and trying to make the playoffs. My effort has never changed.
If someone were to ask me before I made the NBA, you going to have to go through all this, you're going to have to sign your soul away to play in the league, I still would have done it.
I think that my career speaks for itself and shows the type of player I am. I have never had a teammate who didn't enjoy playing with me. There are always going to be skeptics, but chemistry will definitely not be an issue.
When I started to play, all the coaches said it didn't make sense for me to try to play tennis because I was too small. They said I would never make it. But this was something that motivated me. I really wanted to make it.
When I arrived in France, I cried every day. Not because I was in France - I could have been anywhere - but because I was so far, far away from my parents. I missed them so much.
Hey, I'm just looking for an excuse to retire so I can play summer league baseball, go coach my nephews, play pickup basketball. I've always had that ability to move on to the next thing.
A lot of people who have depression understand that the last thing in the world you want to do when you're feeling that way is get up and exercise. It's virtually impossible to do that. It's like somebody beating you.
You're a person a lot longer before and after you're a professional athlete. People always say to me, 'Your image is this, your image is that.' Your image isn't your character. Character is what you are as a person. That's what I worry about.
I'm a New Yorker now, and believe me, there's no comparison between the Big Apple and Kalamazoo, no similarity at all. New York City's hectic, always in fast-forward, and Kalamazoo's more laid-back, smaller, slower.
You tell me you want to race down the street, I'm going to try to beat you. My grandmother asks me to race down the street, I'm going to try to beat her. And I'll probably enjoy it. Competitive to a fault, sometimes.
