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.

Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.

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.

Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.

As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A's paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town.

When you make a bad pitch and the hitter puts it out of the park and you cost your team the game, it's a real test of your maturity to be able to stand in front of your locker fifteen minutes later and admit it to the world. How many people in other professions would be willing to have their job performances evaluated that way, in front of millions, every afternoon at five o'clock.

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.