Willie Stargell Quotes

The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage.

I haven't had the time to say, 'I'm retiring.' But baseball says, 'You're retired.'

I don't want to go on forever and leaving the sport is the hardest decision.

I feel really good right now. It will really be a tough decision. It's so hard to give up what you love doing. Hanging up the boots will not be an easy thing to do.

Over the years, when I've seen players retire, when you ask them about it, they always say you'll know when you're ready, and I think I know when I'm ready. I think I'm ready.

I've always looked at my career as an athlete would look at his. I won't play forever. Some don't know when to walk away, but the smart ones do.

Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm sorry I didn't feel any better or play any better, but that's what happens at the end of careers.

If somebody actually came to me and said, 'O.K., this is it: write your last 'South Park' episodes,' I'd be like, 'No, no, no.'

Officially I'm not playing any more. I've stopped. My time is up. Everything has been a lot of fun.

Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.

I retired simply because I didn't have the passion and motivation anymore; I was tired. At the time I thought, 'Well, I had a great time, there is the end.' At some moment, there is the right time to call it an end.

I won't be managing the Mets. I am closing the door on managing the Mets and probably everybody else.

My work in the House of Representatives, at this time in my life, is completed. It is time to return home.

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.

No athlete ever ends his or her career the way you want to. We all want to play forever. But it doesn't work that way. Accepting the end gracefully is part of being a professional athlete.

I've been fortunate enough to witness some of the biggest moments in football history mere yards away from the action, but I wanted to go out on a high rather than stay too long. I didn't want to get to the stage where people say, 'Oh blimey, Motty's lost it. He's getting the players wrong, and his voice is going.'

It's been a great run. I've done everything I can do announcing wise.

I know too well how much I am going to miss football after my career for me to put up my own barriers.

I think every athlete is afraid for their career to be over.

After much deliberation I have made the decision to retire from playing international football.

How do I imagine my last-ever game? Maybe I'll go out like Zidane, headbutting someone on the pitch!

I think it's going to be the most difficult thing to do, to leave the stage. But if you have no lucidity about it, it's even worse because you don't see the negative side of you still being onstage.

Monday is going to be a very difficult day, I believe, because after all these emotions, you realise that probably you hang up your boots and stop doing something I have been doing for the last 17 or 18 years in a professional way.

I have said goodbye to international cricket.