Christian Yelich Quotes

I understand business and understand the ugly face of baseball, which is the business part of baseball.

Once you've been around this business long enough, anything is a possibility. It's a business first and foremost. Guys play it because they love it, but it is a business, and if you don't understand that it's a business, you're lying to yourself.

I am dead set against free agency. It can ruin baseball.

After 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold regardless of my wishes.

In baseball, nothing surprises me. I understand this is a business.

We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

Our economics are not baseball's economics. Our game is not baseball's game. Our owners are not baseball's owners, with one or two exceptions. Our union is not baseball's union. What we do has to be crafted and suited to address hockey, to address the NHL, to address our 30 teams and our 700-plus players.

The two major things that changed the makeup of all professional sports are money generated by television and courts that players went to in order to win their freedom as free agents.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we didn't have a salary cap.

There's a bigger difference now than when I first got into professional baseball because that was before guaranteed contracts, before there was a lot of money, so it was mostly survival. You had more competition.

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

I have a hard time believing athletes are overpriced. If an owner is losing money, give it up. It's a business. I have trouble figuring out why owners would stay in if they're losing money.

I guess when you get paid over 100 million dollars by one team, it's kind of easy to point the finger at other guys and try to hate on them for trying to get another contract.

If a franchise wants me, they'll take me.

There have been few players that haven't been traded over the years in the NBA.

I understand every piece of business in this league.

Free agency is free agency. I love when NBA players get paid.

I love the Irsay family, but I understand this is a business.

Just because you go to free agency doesn't mean you don't want to be somewhere. It's just a part of the business.

Guys move around in free agency.

That's obviously not easy. I don't want to leave the Mets; I don't want to not play in New York. It's not at all that I want to leave, but that's the business.

Basketball is definitely basketball and that's what we love to play, but in the NBA, there's a business side of it. It's a very serious matter and it's important. It's important to me, it's important to my family.

I'd get rid of it, just get rid of the draft altogether. We'd just deal with the salary cap.