Jon Lester Quotes

Everybody in the minor leagues - if you're a player, an announcer, whatever - wants to be in the big leagues.

Your first responsibility is to the organization, to teach and prepare players to get to the big leagues and have them ready when they get there, but everyone in the minors wants to be in the majors.

Going back down to the minors is the toughest thing to handle in baseball.

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

Well, I wanted to play twenty years in the major leagues. I never made it twenty though. I played nineteen.

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.

If you go back to the minors, you have to start swinging and hitting the ball again. I've been in the minors since the '70s semipros, let's put it that way.

I thought I was a pretty good shortstop, but I also wanted to play in the major leagues.

When I was a minor league player, my goal was to be a major leaguer. It's no different as a minor league manager.

Even though it feels like you are so far away from the big leagues, my love for the game kept me motivated to get through the hard times in the minors.

Once you leave the minor leagues, you want to not come back. But it's the path that I'm on, the journey that I'm on.

I want to finish my career in Cleveland. They gave me the opportunity to play in the big leagues.

I didn't know if I could make it to the big leagues without going through Triple-A.

If you're in the minor leagues, you want to get to the majors.

I never forgot the four years I spent with the Phillies, my September call-ups and my big league Spring Trainings. I never forgot that.

I don't want to be one of those great players who never made it to the Series.

I'd rather play in the major leagues and have some bad games than play consistently good ball in the minors.

When there were just eight teams in each of the big leagues, I was always told, 'It's hard to come up, but it's just hard to stay in the big leagues.' That's because there's always somebody. The Cardinals had so many minor league clubs and had so many good ballplayers.

At my growing years of 18 to 21 years old in the Minor Leagues, I dreamed of being a Philadelphia Phillie.

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.

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 knew I'd never make it back to the major leagues as a player. Lee MacPhail came to me and asked if I wanted to manage the Yankees' Fort Lauderdale club. I thought about it for a day or two and decided to take the job. That was the turning point. I knew it was what I wanted to do.

Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren't allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training.