Hey, it's been a great ride for me, a great life. Everything I have I owe to baseball. Baseball owes me nothin'. Ain't nobody has to give me nothin'. I would be embarrassed if I had a day somewhere. I don't want no day. I want friends, to live my lif...
Even after I played ten years of ball, I still felt like I had to play well or somebody might take my place. They had plenty of players in the minor leagues who were good enough to come up and take your job, and I think that kept us going all of the ...
He means as much as Roberto Clemente does to Latin people. Thank God I had the opportunity to know him. I wish my kids had the opportunity to be around him, because that's how I want my kids to live their lives. I want them to be like Stan Musial. No...
I asked myself, 'What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to be like everyone else or are you going to do what's right?' I just made a decision. I said, 'It's time to grow up. It's time to start living for the Lord, do things the right ...
In the nineteenth century, Fritjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds by dint of its exhilarating physicality. By extension, I believe that snow helps strip away the things that don't matter. It leaves us thinking of li...
I played American Legion ball starting when I was 14. But I didn't catch until I was 17. I was 75-3 as a high school pitcher, but it was like everybody knew that I was supposed to be a catcher. When the scouts would come around, and I was pitching, t...
We in the Negro leagues felt like we were contributing something to baseball, too, when we were playing. We played with a round ball, and we played with a round bat. And we wore baseball uniforms, and we thought that we were making a contribution to ...
Listen, I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist, I've butt it as long as I've got a head, and I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old, fistless, footless, and toothless, I'...
When you see Major League Baseball putting academies in other countries, obviously that throws up a red flag. You wonder why they ain't going up in our neighborhood. Bottom line, what I see, I talk about... I see it over and over. If anybody can show...
There is only one Mariano Rivera. There won't be another person who will come along and do what he did. No one does it like him. It was an honor to catch him and play alongside him for as long as I did. He made my job as a catcher so much easier. Mar...
My buddy David Wells is a big motorcycle guy, so when I go visit him in San Diego, he takes me out on his bike. He's got some antique Indians. I never really rode during my career, because I was afraid I'd fall off and ruin my career.
We played hard and we partied hard. I'm not ashamed of that. I was no angel - I did some things I shouldn't have done, lived a lifestyle I shouldn't have lived. I had a blast at times; other times, I probably compromised my job, my duty to do my job,...
It makes no difference to me what kind of bat I have. For instance, I often grab the first bat I come across when I go up to the plate. Muggsy McGraw uses a light stick and Jake Stenzel uses a heavy one, but I'm liable to take any one of the miscella...
One day, the infielders were having a pretty bad time and were making some bad throws to me at first base. After digging a few out of the dirt, Joe Orengo called over to me, 'Atta boy, John, you look like a big cat.' Some of the writers overheard the...
I like to eat Wheaties Fuel for breakfast with fresh fruit and egg whites. For lunch, I like to eat my wife's 'homerun chicken,' which is chicken, rice and vegetables, and for dinner I eat grilled steak or a couple of chicken breasts with rice and ve...
My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who ...
A newspaperman said, 'You have to have a team in New York.' I replied, 'Who says you have to have a team in New York?' What came out in the papers was a headline that said, Giles Says, 'Who needs New York?' I confess that quote bothered me, and there...
I went in, and there, in the front room, a converted bedroom, sat the first radio I had ever seen. The equipment was so bulky that it took up one entire wall of the bedroom. The set, which could send or receive signals, was tuned to KDKA in Pittsburg...
We never went into a game that we did not feel sure of winning, and when we lost, we blamed it on hard luck or the umpires. We never gave any other team credit for being able to play ball, and the result was that we were hard to beat. If I could get ...
When I first started swinging a bat, I swung righty. So one time, my dad came home, and he wanted to see my batting stance. So I showed him. He says, 'You don't hit right-handed. You hit left-handed.' At that age I didn't even really think about it. ...
If what you need, in order to feel good about yourself later on, is to show him some mercy - then show him mercy. If you need to tell him the truth, do that. But try to look at in terms of what you're going to be able to live with ten, twenty years d...
