To give one can of beer to a thousand people is not nearly as much fun as to give 1,000 cans of beer to one guy. You give a thousand people a can of beer and each of them will drink it, smack his lips and go back to watching the game. You give 1,000 cans to one guy, and there is always the outside possibility that 50,000 people will talk about it.

People identify with the swashbuckling individuals, not polite little men who field their position well. Sir Galahad had a big following - but I'll bet Lancelot had more.

I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous.

I don't mind the high price of stardom. I just don't like the high price of mediocrity.

Though it is a team game by definition, it is actually a series of loosely connected individual efforts.

I don't want the natural athlete -- I want a guy who'll go after the hard ones.

What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!... Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober.