Everybody in the states is so relaxed, and everybody in Japan is so uptight.

I'm not a big guy and hopefully kids could look at me and see that I'm not muscular and not physically imposing, that I'm just a regular guy. So if somebody with a regular body can get into the record books, kids can look at that. That would make me happy.

I wanted the challenge of competing against the best players in the world.

I'm told I either look bigger than I do on television or that I look smaller than I look on television. No one seems to think I look the same size.

If I'm in a slump, I ask myself for advice.

As professionals we have a responsibility of providing a good show for the fans. Getting hits and home runs is what they want to see.

In baseball, even the best hitters fail seven of ten times, and of those seven failures there are different reasons why. Some are personal failures, others are losses to the pitcher. You just get beat. In those personal failures, I felt I could have done better.