Jacob Ruppert Quotes

Captain Huston and myself have spent over $200,000 in strengthening the Yankees since we purchased the club. We paid $37,500 for Frank Baker; we paid $25,000 for Lee Magee, and we have got rid of a young fortune on other players who couldn't deliver the goods. And we have had some of the most frightful luck I ever heard of.

I wouldn't want to go out six nights a week and watch somebody's reserves playing to check out a footballer to see if we're going to buy him.

The Red Sox are a curious thing because so much here is media driven. You can't go fire half your scouts here because they are all friends with the local reporters. Your life is going to hell in the papers.

Trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.

After one year in the Texas League, the American League bought the rights to my contract. They optioned me back to the Texas League for the 1970 season.

You win pennants in the off season when you build your teams with trades and free agents.

I know I never saw Casey Stengel when I was being scouted. And how could you be in a ballpark and not know if Casey Stengel was there?

I got three years invested in Brett Hundley, two years invested in Joe Callahan. The quarterback room is exactly where it needs to be.

I don't know if I'm different from everybody else, but there's really only two things to me that are really, really important - recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.

If a better player comes along, I will try to persuade the club to get him in. Sometimes, you can do your business and all of a sudden something appears that you never expected to appear.

If you identify those guys - something we have done in the past - who are not as valued in the current market for whatever reason and you look to get them to play at a higher level than where they have come from. That's how you develop the team.

When you're a general manager, you don't get to see every single player, so you have to rely on your scouts.

Scouts always think they're right. They're not right all the time. They don't even know how hard it is. Most of those scouts never played baseball.

Sometimes you have to manage, and you have to sell two or three players who aren't playing many games.

Scouting and player development is the key to year-in and year-out success, not the occasional lucky hit. There are no definitive answers in this game, no shortcuts. When you think you've got it all figured out, you can get humbled very quickly.

After the first time I got traded - I was in the bullpen warming up for a game in Double A, and I got called back in and got traded - that was probably the, like, most crazy it could be. And once I got traded, the next time it got a little easier, and I got traded the next time - it's just part of it.

When you get a draft pick right, you should be given full credit.

There are more second-, third-, fourth-, fifth- and so on in the big leagues than first-round picks.

I'm not stupid - if you buy one of the world's best goalkeepers, it's not to keep him on the bench.

The WWE is fine. They can afford to not only sign anybody they really want, but they can also afford to sign people just to keep them out of the talent pool that everybody else has.

You can't think you can find a top scorer for free.

My job is to bring in players I think can help this team, regardless of where they're playing.

There are certain guys you just take from different teams that you watch.

Whether it's drafting or player development, the ultimate is putting a team together.

Raising capital is not the toughest part. The toughest part is building a great team and making sure it's growing with the company.