Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.
Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.
My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn't pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn... If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year's time.
I'm no hero. Heroes don't come back. Survivors return home. Heroes never come home. If anyone thinks I'm a hero, I'm not.
Life comes down to honesty and doing what's right. That's what's most important.
I try to be a good human being and keep up with what's going on in the world by reading and staying in touch with the current events.
Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.
Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.
There was great leadership in this country at the time of World War II. There was also unrelenting resolve at home, in America's factories and on the farms, in the cities and the country.
The soldiers that didn't come back were the heroes. It's a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you're a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you're a survivor.
When I pick up the ball and it feels nice and light and small I know I'm going to have a good day. But if I picked it up and it's big and heavy, I know I'm liable to get into a little trouble.
My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don't think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.
You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I'll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.
Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.
I don't think baseball owes colored people anything. I don't think colored people owe baseball anything, either.
I spent 34 months on the battleship Alabama, South Dakota-class. I was a gun captain. First we went to Russia for about 11 months with the British convoys. Then we were up in Norway and Scandinavia.
If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.
I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.
Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but DiMaggio was the greatest all around player.
The difference between relief pitching when I did it today is simple, there is too much of it. It's one of those cases where more is not necessarily better.
