Pastoral Resources

Every day I went to the ballpark in Yankee Stadium as well as on the road people were on my back. The last six years in the American League were mental hell for me. I was drained of all my desire to play baseball.

I live in L.A., so I go to basketball games. But I love baseball.

What I miss when I'm away is the pride in baseball. Especially the pride of being on a team that wins.

I really love the togetherness in baseball. That's a real true love.

I just try to do what I have to do and let the people out there do what they have to do, which is have fun, scream, yell and jump around. I try to do what I have to do, which is play baseball, and I can only play in that piece of area there, so that's what I try to do.

If you've ever been around a group of actors, you've noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting. It's exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work.

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.

Baseball and malaria keep coming back.

I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.

That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.

The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have.

I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game.

Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.

Defense to me is the key to playing baseball.

I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.

And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11'. So I just picked baseball.

It really came down to deciding between baseball and soccer. Soccer won out because I enjoyed it more.

I think that's why I like baseball. There's something great about it - you're young, the pitcher's young and he's got this great arm, and he doesn't really realize anything about strategy.

There is but one game and that game is baseball.

Baseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.