On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.
There are a lot of people who know me who can't understand for the life of them why I would got to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew.
There's nothing bad that accrues from baseball.
Baseball has undergone and absorbed a whole set of dislocations.
We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans.
For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.
The ups and downs, that's baseball life. That's what I live for, play for.
I've always had that mindset of, 'OK, I may be hot this month or doing really well this month, but don't get too high, don't get too low - just enjoy it.' Don't ride the rollercoaster, basically. I always thought about it like, I'm not going to an amusement park, I'm going to a baseball field.
I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It's a thinking man's game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.
When I was younger, I'd always forget stuff. I think there was probably 4-5 times where we'd drive 30 minutes to a town for the baseball tournament, and all of a sudden, I'd get to the field and look in my bag, and I didn't have my cleats. So my dad had to race all the way home to get my cleats and get back before the game started so I could play.
