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.

I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.

Nobody lives forever and I've had a blessed life.

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.

I needed to join the Navy. If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies, they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

Cooperstown is the greatest place on Earth.

I went on inactive duty in August 1945, and since I had stayed in such good shape and had played ball on military teams, I was ready to start for the Indians just two days later, against the Tigers.