“What cracks me up is people who think I don’t take baseball seriously. It’s the most important thing in my life. They don’t know how hard it is for me to get a bad game out of my mind. I still can’t, but I’m getting better.”

It’s so funny that people specify that year because in a way it was the biggest battle for me health wise.

You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth – that means the boys. And after you’ve been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.

I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.

Gee, its lonesome in the outfield. It’s hard to keep awake with nothing to do.

As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

I hear the cheers when they roared and the jeers when they echoed.

A man ought to get all he can earn. A man who knows he’s making money for other people ought to get some of the profit he brings in. Don’t make any difference if it’s baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It’s business, I tell you. There ain’t no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.

I said I’m going to hit the next one right over the flagpole. God must have been with me.