Reggie Jackson Quotes

There is no question that in the '50s and '60s, black players got thrown at more. That's not a negative comment. It may come out that way, but that's the way it was. Hitting another player was part of the game; hitting a player in the head is not.

In football, you can always maim a person if you wanted to.

There's a fine line between physical and thug ball, and the Knicks have crossed the line on occasion.

Sometimes people take struggling on the court to an extreme level.

I never want to hurt a player but being physical is different. Body to body.

Sixteen games, to me, is a long enough schedule for anybody. We're already concerning ourselves with head injuries and bodily harm to all of the professional athletes. Add to extra games to it, (and) you are just increasing those risks.

We penalize and suspend players for making contact with the head while checking, in an effort to reduce head injuries, yet we still allow fighting. We're stuck in the middle and need to decide what kind of sport do we want to be. Either anything goes and we accept the consequences, or take the next step and eliminate fighting.

In the olden days, the umpire didn't have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you.

But now there are more concussions due to not being used to the hard hitting.

We don't realize how much the NFL is quietly drifting towards flag football. During the '80s, part of the defense's goal was to put the fear of God into offensive players... that's fading away.

Sometimes English football takes pride in having the lowest yellow-card count in Europe, but of course it will have if you can take someone's leg off and still not be booked.

Quarterbacks are untouchable nowadays. If you hit a quarterback too hard, or if you fall on him with too much weight - which is a judgment thing from a professional standpoint - you're going to get flagged.

Nobody I ever broke bread with - and I see players all the time - talked about using their head running the football. I've seen Barry Sanders and Eric Dickerson and Marcus Allen and Franco Harris, and we've all been together - we were all together at the Super Bowl - and no one talked about using their head.

As the equipment has gotten better - and it's gotten better in an attempt to try to protect the player more - then the equipment becomes used more as a weapon.

I think if you're raising your foot high whether it's an overhead kick or not, you're risking a red card.

Hard fouls are a part of playoff basketball, and I think that's how basketball should be. I don't take those fouls personally.

Teams are always hitting me in the gut, trying to grab me when I jump and stuff like that. But I expect it.

I like to bump people, to feel me getting into somebody's jersey. I'm just different. I like contact, like physical play, like pushing and holding. But I'm not dirty.

I would bet you that even though people think I absorbed an inordinate number of head injuries, I'd say relative to the number of guys who have played this game, I would say that my head injuries were relatively small.

I'm not a troublemaker. People say, 'You got into a lot of incidents.' Yeah, but it was on the basketball floor.

I just don't want people to mistake playing basketball, playing hard with trying to hurt somebody.

As long as we're having contact and as long as there are collisions, there's going to be head injuries. What the long-term consequences are of that, we're beginning to learn, and that definitely will have an impact on the game as we know it.

I can't be a nice man on the field. I try to laugh, but whenever I start laughing or be jovial, I get smashed.

I like to play physical, and I'm a big guy, and I think sometimes - maybe sometimes I am pushing somebody, and I don't realize how hard I'm pushing them. And then they do it back, and it's kind of like, 'Jeez!'

It is okay to play tough and try to hit guys hard in the course of the play - that's fine - but I don't like unnecessary roughness or things that happen after the play.