My 12 years in New York were very, very special, the fans were very special, and it's something I will take with me wherever I go and into retirement.
Stress is something that is sort of out of your control. You get stressed out over looking at the finish line. Stress is something that is an outside thing. Stress is an anxiety.
When we lost, I couldn't sleep at night. When we win, I can't sleep at night. But, when you win, you wake up feeling better.
You get to the big leagues, and you think, 'Can I do this stuff?' Then you take the first pitch down the middle for Strike 1, and you think, 'I could have hit that.'
Some of these guys wear beards to make them look intimidating, but they don't look so tough when they have to deliver the ball. Their abilities and their attitudes don't back up their beards.
I can't recall too much about pitching, but I do remember that I was anxious to get it over with. I just wanted to get that first game over with and go from there.
My first year in baseball, there were only one or two reporters. My second year, I got to the Triple-A playoffs, there were four or five. When I came up in 1984, I never saw so many people.
I have the greatest job in the world. Only one person can have it. You have shortstops on other teams - I'm not knocking other teams - but there's only one shortstop on the Yankees.
I wish I trusted people more. But when I meet someone, the first thing is, 'What does this person want?' And I put up a defense mechanism. But I've always been that way.
The number one priority is playing baseball. There are so many people in New York trying to get you to do this and get you to do that, which is fine, but you have to take care of yourself.
I remember going from rookie ball to A, to double A, then to triple A. At every level it seemed like the game was faster. The bigger the situation, the more the game speeds up. That's all mental. It messes people up.
I think, a lot of times, players get in trouble when they're asked questions and they think they have to find a way to answer it. If you ask me a question and I say, 'I don't know,' there's really no follow-up.
I've been playing baseball since I was 5 or 6 years old. I've been on a schedule, pretty much, since I was in eighth, ninth grade. I look forward to not doing that.
I'm just a ballplayer with one ambition, and that is to give all I've got to help my ball club win. I've never played any other way.
You start chasing a ball and your brain immediately commands your body to 'Run forward, bend, scoop up the ball, peg it to the infield,' then your body says, 'Who me?'
We're just being ourselves and having fun playing baseball. The biggest thing is when people look at our team, they can see that we're having a lot of fun.
Being thrown into the fire and getting the thing turned around in a hurry made it more difficult. Things have been done the hard way. I think you learn better when things are done the hard way.
I am convinced that in my own career I could usually have hit 30 points higher if I had made a specialty of hitting.
In my own case I have frequently faced the pitcher when I had no desire whatever to hit. I wanted to get a base on balls.
I'm a child of the sixties, I'm a man of the sixties. During that period of time this country was coming apart at the seams. We were in Southeast Asia. Good men were dying for America and for the Constitution.
I started in for the ball but I just couldn't get it. I should have caught it because I was used to catching everything on the sandlots. But they hit the ball a lot harder in the major leagues and I just couldn't reach the ball this time.
