Quotes from Cal Ripken, Jr.

I had aches and pains when I played. No player is ever 100 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent. Guys that play 158 or 162 or 145, we are all in the same boat.

Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it's his job to make those decisions about who plays.

I did make a choice when I got away from baseball to be there to get my kids off to college.

A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard.

When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball.

The older you get, the things that you thought you wanted to do when you were younger, you're checking them off your list because you no longer want to them.

I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.

The last thing you want to do is go down in the history of All-Star game competition as the only injury (his nose was broken by Roberto Hernandez) sustained during the team picture.

I don't mind being described as vanilla in certain ways.

You learn as a player not to listen to the criticism. Many of the people who put out that criticism might not be as accomplished, might not understand the game as well from the inside-out.

If you do a job, do it right or there is no point.

I think Nick Markakis is a perennial All-Star, and nobody knows about him. I think people are learning about how good he is.

I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.

Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.

We consider ourselves the luckiest fans on the face of the Earth.

What keeps me going? I guess it's just a desire to keep trying to contribute and do things in life.

I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.

You don't project yourself in the Hall of Fame as a player. It's only during that five-year period where people start asking about it, and it doesn't seem real until it happens.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, you couldn't say you were better than the other person because you knew you had a secret. You knew you had cheated.

I lived the baseball life as a kid, with my dad in it. And I lived the baseball life as an adult, because I was in it. When I retired, I wanted the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible and home-based for my kids.

Disadvantaged kids many times don't have the support network that we all have. I know how important my parents were in my life and many of these kids don't have that support network.

I am driven by what you are able to accomplish and how you are able to help some people. I go about it each and every day, sometimes I think I say yes too much and I am too busy in my life.

There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.

I'm always flattered when someone thinks of me as a potential commissioner of baseball.