Buck Leonard Quotes

I could have been the next Babe Ruth. No doubt about it.

I took a huge risk leaving baseball, because I was predicted to play in the big leagues. I'm kind of a prototypical second baseman.

For so many years, I wished it could have been different. I wished I could have gotten the opportunity sooner. I would have loved to see what had happened had I got to the NFL right out of college and all of those different things.

I hated baseball. I really didn't like baseball at all until someone decided they were going to pay me... Every year I played in the big leagues, the day the season ended, I called my buddies in West Virginia and said, 'I'll be home tomorrow.'

If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.

I had an opportunity with Baltimore to make it to the World Series, and that didn't happen.

I would say I was jock. I went to Sierra College. I was a big baseball player. Getting into the MLB was my dream - to become a left-handed pitcher for the Yankees. That's what I was hoping, but life kind of went the other way.

Even though I play a professional sport now, I love college baseball.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized - never knowing.

An emotion that lives with me is a sense of 'what might have been' had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon - speed.

I had 12 years under my belt of baseball at the amateur level before I got to the big leagues.

I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.

I just wanted to go play in the big leagues. But possibly playing for the Yankees is very special.

I started in the lowest league in baseball, and I worked my way all the way up to Triple A and then to the big leagues. I never reached the level that I thought I would reach as a player. But that's the way it goes. So then I started from the bottom as a manager, and I worked my way up to managing the Dodgers for 20 years.

Once you make the majors, it's never a great feeling to go back to the minors - no matter what the circumstances.

You know, when you first come up, and you get called up to the big leagues, all you want to do is just, you just want to have a career, a nice career. You want to make a living at it.

I was in the big leagues my first year in pro ball - pretty fast. I really don't think I had an understanding of what it meant to be a pitcher at that level at that point.

In my head, I felt if I'd stayed at City and got a chance, I could have done a good job. It was made clear that wasn't going to happen, though.

I see myself as an average to above-average catcher in the big leagues.

My dad was a great athlete growing up, and he could never fulfill his dreams of playing professional baseball.

The only thing I regret in life is that I didn't practice basketball more.

That man made me miss my destiny.

I wanted to play football and see how that went. In my mind, I knew I wasn't good enough to be a pro, but I was having a really fun time doing it. When you're on a college team, you can tell who's going to be a pro or not almost instantly.

No second chance?" A wry smile twisted Carrick's lips. "There might have been, had I not waited so long to take it.

It was a once in a lifetime thing. I hate to think it but I bet it's true. It's too bad for us that our once in a lifetime happened when were too young to handle it.