Dave Winfield Quotes

I have nothing but all the respect in the world for Jackie Robinson.

Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.

I guess what really made me a Dodgers fan from the beginning was that the team had Jackie Robinson, the first 'Negro' in the major leagues.

Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.

I believe that one of the reasons I get to play golf all over the world is because of the barriers that Lee Elder broke down. I just think he's amazing.

The story of Jackie Robinson is also the story of Branch Rickey. He had many reasons for doing what he did, but he stood up against his own people.

I see similarities between Jackie Robinson and myself.

There is an incredible film, 42. It's the incredible story of Jackie Robinson. I have extolled the virtues of this movie to everyone I meet. I've given quotes to everyone I talk to.

Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.

Jackie Robinson, as an athlete and as someone who was trying to make a stand for equality, he was exemplary.

I liked Jackie Robinson because he was cool to watch, not because he was black. Every time you turned around, he was hitting a triple or making a great play in the field or, best of all, stealing home.

As I look out there and see the culture of baseball, a lot of blacks and Latins, it's given me a lot of joy to know that Jackie started that. If Jackie hadn't come in '47, me and Ron Santo wouldn't have played in Double-A and all those years in the big leagues.

One of my heroes growing up was Jackie Robinson. My mom, an ardent baseball fan from whom I got my love of the game, had an old baseball card of his from the 1950s and told us his amazing story of courage in integrating baseball.

Were it not for Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey would be remembered, if at all, as a Bible-thumping midwestern Methodist windbag who neither played baseball on Sundays when he was a mediocre catcher for the St. Louis Browns and the New York Highlanders, nor attended games on the Sabbath as a baseball executive.

I cannot but feel that the one man, above all others, who deserves the eternal thanks of his own race, and all thinking people, for bringing about baseball’s greatest reform, is Jackie Robinson himself…Certainly baseball people should be eternally grateful for the contribution he made to his own people, and to the game.

All the courage and competitiveness of Jackie Robinson affects me to this day. If I patterned my life after anyone it was him, not because he was the first black baseball player in the majors but because he was a hero.

I always felt that, through it all, there was a really strong, forward, positive, constructive accomplishment by the American people during that period, if you consider that during the period from 1954 to 1965, this country broke through the caste system.

I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started.

It's nice to come into a town and be referred to as the manager of the Cleveland Indians instead of as the first black manager.

When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.

It was a breaking period for black people coming into baseball, and how many followed depended on Jackie's conduct. But that's not the case now. What and how I do doesn't mean nearly as much as what and how Jackie did.

He (Jackie Robinson) knew he had to do well. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have.

The great thing that I appreciate - the fact that my godfather, William 'Sticky' Jackson, was a Tuskegee Airman because my father was first born in Ozark, Alabama. The sacrifices and the commitment of those men made it possible for myself and many others.

I met Nelson Mandela, and I really didn't know what to say. It was years ago at a benefit. I was just in awe of this man because of what he'd done.

The Negro Marines are no longer on trial. They are Marines, period