Quotes About Baseball

I was told by the general manager that a white player had received a higher raise than me. Because white people required more money to live than black people. That is why I wasn't going to get a raise.

When you feel like you're going to have a low-scoring game, why not have one of your better hitters have a chance? All of a sudden you're in the ninth inning and you have one of your best hitters on deck that doesn't get up. I always think about that.

Like I'm seeing Chris Sale; he's got a similar pitching style and strikes guys out a lot. Why are people only talking about my strikeouts and all that stuff?... Why not the other guys, who have similar numbers and pitch counts?

I'm being compared to the impossible. I never saw Mays, Aaron or Clemente play. What about the people I face every day? Tim Raines is the best? Mattingly is the best? Why not compare me to my peers?

I'm more conscious of where the outfielders are playing when I'm on base, and I don't take such wide turns anymore running around the bases. I'm still learning.

I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them.

My wife and I love children. We have five of our own. I would ask that anyone who looks up to me would instead look up to God. I am nothing without Him. Everything I do in life and in baseball is to glorify Him.

Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive.

I could throw pretty hard. I might strike out 16 guys, but I might walk 10. I mean, I was wild.

You keep pitching. Most of the pitches run wild. A few are caught.

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control.

The goals is to create a really high 'floor' for this organization, where the 'off' years are years where you might win in the high-80s and sneak a division or a wild card or win 90 games and get in and find a way to win in October. And the great years, you win 103 and win the whole thing.

That was one of the most comfortable things about leaving baseball was to leave the environment. It's very much like a rock star existence - the nightlife, the hotels, lack of privacy... There's a lot of temptations out there. It was nice getting away from it.

It's tempting, because as one senator said to me, 'We know if we invite baseball down, we'll draw a crowd'.

I don't know where Hank Aaron will break Ruth's record but I can tell you one thing - ten years from the day he hits it three million people will say they were there.

We watch so much film, calling up pitch by pitch, count by count in order to spot tendencies. Technology is a big part of how I get ready for a game. What's funny is a lot of the NFL guys say they study the 'Madden' game; that's how they learn to read offenses and defenses.

We try to do a great job of understanding the opposing hitter and his tendencies. Maybe understand the hitter better than he knows himself.

I'm a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can't be gifted in everything.

A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn't the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn't going to say every day, 'Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.'

I wasn't athletic. I played baseball, but I was terrible.

Any teammate of mine that had a kid and a boy that was capable of playing baseball, I think I set a terrific example of 'Don't do this' and 'Don't do that.' And that's one of the things that I'm most proud of.

In baseball you have terrific data and you can be a lot more creative with it.

The arc of Ken Griffey Jr.'s swing has gotten bigger than when he hit line drives. Juan Gonzalez is a terrific power hitter, too.

I think baseball represents something closer to our experience. There's no clock in baseball; it's not over until it's over. It's like life in that there are prolonged periods of boredom and monotony, punctuated by intense moments of excitement and sometimes terror.