Professional Baseball Quotes

I was always interested in baseball. In fact, in my younger years, I played it in an amateur way. But up to the time when I became identified with the Yankees, I was a strong National League rooter.

I've pitched too many innings and pitched too many years - one game doesn't make or break my career.

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.

At the minor-league and major-league level, you know how important your coaching staff is, but in a big market it becomes absolutely huge.

When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.

When I played Little League, I looked up to the big leaguers, too, and collected their baseball cards.

Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.

Everything I have, I owe to baseball and the Dodgers.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

The Oakland A's, I loved all my teammates there. I loved all the coaches. They gave me the opportunity to play in the big leagues. And for that, I thank them. I mean it was a dream come true for me.

I don't think there's any player that's more talented than Alex Rodriguez. He cares very deeply about doing well. Baseball is his life. He puts a lot of pressure on himself.

I played with the Birmingham Black Barons. I was making 500 at 14. That was a lot of money in those days.

I had started law school at Florida State University as a part-timer. I would go two quarters, and they allowed me to drop out to play baseball, and then I'd get readmitted in September. I was convinced I was going to be a lawyer and was using my baseball salary to pay my way through school.

I don't know that I've ever looked at baseball like a purely casual fan. That's just realistic when you grow up with it putting food on your table, and with it taking your dad out of town.

As more speed afoot was constantly demanded for big league ball, I noticed the many infield bounders which the runner beat to first only by the thinnest fractions of a second.

Every day I went to the ballpark in Yankee Stadium as well as on the road people were on my back. The last six years in the American League were mental hell for me. I was drained of all my desire to play baseball.

That's your dream, to play professional baseball. When you get the opportunity like that, getting drafted - especially by Oakland, a California team, pretty close to home - it was tempting. At the time, I just didn't think I was ready or mature enough mentally or physically to start pro ball.

That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.

When I started playing the game of baseball, the more I played and the better numbers I got, the more I started thinking about the Hall of Fame. But I never thought I had a chance to be there.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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.

If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.

When I was growing up, I always had the dream of being an analyst for a minor league baseball team or something like that.

I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control.