I've felt some great feelings on the baseball field... in front of 50,000 people and millions on TV... but the feeling you get when you give a kid a chance, that is a hundred times greater than that feeling.

Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.

I'd like to be remembered. I'd like to think that someday two guys will be talking in a bar and one of them will say something like, 'Yeah, he's a good shortstop, but he's not as good as ole Ripken was.'

You can keep going on and on about the interactions of people, which makes it a great drama and great event ,and you'll always hold that special, but if you're looking at a baseball moment, the feeling you get when you win the World Series by far exceeds anything else in the game that you're able to do.

I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.

The reality is that players can't play forever.

I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.