Pastoral Resources

The Oakland clubhouse is a wonderful place. A lot of these guys feel like rejects. They were rejects and they feel - they can tell you how baseball screwed up.

The Red Sox are the local scapegoats. It's hard enough to play baseball without being the local scapegoat too.

The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.

There are several insights at the heart of the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy.

Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger culture.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.

The hardest thing to believe about The Fan is not that Robert De Niro is stalking somebody again but that anyone cares that much about a baseball player.

What I'd really like to give a try is cricket, because I grew up playing American baseball.

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

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball.

Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles. This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life.

Watching baseball under the lights is like observing dogs indoors, at a pedigree show. In both instances, the environment is too controlled to suit the species.

Words can be like baseball bats when used maliciously.

I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.

Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.

The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.

As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due.

It was all I lived for, to play baseball.

I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.