Quotes About Dedication

The Yankees are my team.

People talked a lot about this upcoming talent on the Yankees and it was something that you kind of saw coming. These kids were so hungry and I believe that's why they became so successful. They worked very hard and they were so hungry, and I think that leads to wins.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

I'm married. I have three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for them.

You grow up dreaming about playing in the World Series since you're a little kid. I remember the days in the back yard with my parents playing whiffle ball, saying, 'Hey, it's Game 7 of the World Series, are you gonna win or are you gonna lose?'

I knew about boxing, as my dad could fight. He had a successful security firm in Liverpool, and I'd see him come back from a jog before shadow boxing in the back yard. I'd watch and replicate what he was doing, as kids do. It's funny how things turn out.

I started as a working pupil in a yard, mucking out and doing all the duties... and I just never gave up on my dream.

I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.

We all want to thank Emmitt for allowing us to enjoy every yard.

So along with that is spending a lot of time with the ball. For me it was, I loved to juggle the ball in my front yard, and I always challenged myself - how many juggles can I get today? I think for players to get better, it's just about spending the time.

I always had two or three jobs at the same time. I started doing yard work when I was 7 or 8. When I was 13, I got my first state job doing road construction. Between working, sports and school, I hardly ever had free time.

One thing I learned working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was to be on time. If the day begins at 8 A.M., be there early, get there, punch the time clock; don't just stand there like an oaf.

I was always impressed by how much my dad went out in the yard and played with me and my siblings when we were kids. I'm sure he was tired coming back from work, since he traveled a lot. But he always took time out of his day to go out in the yard.

We had this little yard, and during the summer holidays, when my mum and dad were working, I spent hours bowling a golf ball at a stick. Just bowling, bowling, bowling. And I got to where I could hit the stick every time, repeating the same action. That's where the darts came from.

On the nights the Lakers played, I wouldn't miss a second of the game. Every timeout, every commercial, I'd run to the front yard to imitate my favorite Laker, Kobe.

The tag that I was too small and too slow just made me work that much harder. Besides, quickness is more important than flat-out speed. How often does a receiver run 40 yards straight down the field? Not very often. Lateral speed is what counts. How quickly can you get in and out of a cut? I can do that as well as anyone.

I work on my speed and strength every day, and I do a lot of work on my first five yards. For a footballer, that's really important.

There's always areas of the game you want to improve. For me, specifically, yards after the catch, making those tough, contested catches.

You don't work your butt off for 90 yards of a 100-yard dash and then just quit.

Whether it's yards, touchdowns, catches, if you just do what you're supposed to do, you're eventually going to get the ball.

I have my own office, and I'm there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I'm sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.

Don may yawn at the idea, which he often does, but the great thing about Don, he has confidence in me and Mike and Ed and Leslie and Steve, that we're not going go out and do stories that will put people to sleep.

The thing you can't measure is someone's heart, someone's desire. You can measure a 40, his vertical, his bench press, and that might let you know things like, yeah, he can jump high. But desire, his dedication, his determination, that's something you can't measure. That's something you can't measure about Rod Smith.

And yeah, my handicap was down to a 10 when we were at the thick of it. I trained for six or seven months, golfing every day for six hours, seven days a week, with eight trainers. It was intense.