Baseball in the Navy always was much more fun than it had been in the major leagues.

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.

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 don't think baseball owes colored people anything. I don't think colored people owe baseball anything, either.

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.

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.

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.