When someone becomes successful or rich and famous, people perceive that person as being different. But I'm the same guy I've always been.

Regardless of what you want to call it, guys need some type of spirituality they can grab onto. If it's Christianity, which is a very structured approach, or if it's something that's a little more open-ended... like, Zen's something you can make yourself a part of. You can interpret it for yourself, like Taoism and stuff like that.

It would be great to just be able to ignore everything and pitch to a spot, to suppress the intellect and let the intuition take over.

You can be born into a musical family and have an ear for music but being technically gifted, be it playing an instrument or songwriting, takes years to get good at. So for me, I'm excited to start over, and yeah, I have a few talents I can build off of. But I see this as a long process; it's a marathon.

I can count my friends on one hand.

I do look forward to keeping in touch with the guys because we'll always be connected in people's minds.

I'm not trying to be cocky, but I set such a high standard for myself. I'm not happy when I pitch seven innings and give up two runs and get a win.