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Am I still in uniform? Then I ain't retired.
Brooks Robinson belongs in a higher league.
Doctors tell me I have the body of a thirty year old. I know I have the brain of a fifteen year old. If you've got both, you can play baseball.
Gullett's the only guy who can throw a baseball through a car wash and not get the ball wet.
I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.
I haven't missed a game in two-and-a-half years. I go to the park as sick as a dog and, when I see my uniform hanging there, I get well right now. Then I see some of you guys and I get sick again.
I'm just like everybody else. I have two arms, two legs and four-thousand hits.
I'm not bad. I'm no Joe Morgan, but I'm pretty good for a white guy.
I told him who to watch. I said if you want to be a catcher, watch Johnny Bench. If you want to be a right-handed power hitter, watch Mike Schmidt. If you just want to be a hitter, watch me.
People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game.
Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.
Pressure? Well it ain't hitting in forty-four straight games, because I done that and it was fun. The playoffs are pressure.
Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don't lose your momentum, and there's one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.
Somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.
Sure I do, and if someone paid you six-thousand dollars a game, you'd have fun as well.
The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.
The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can't move unless he has the horses.
There is an old saying that money can't buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.
The team that wins two-thirds of its one run games usually wins the pennant.
When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than Cobb.
When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.
With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.
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