People striving for approval from others become phony.

Some people enjoy taking a light stroll in the morning and that gives them relief and that sort of feeling. That is what I gain by practicing, by swinging the bat.

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.

I'm anxious to face them (major league pitchers) all, but in reality I'm looking forward most to (Boston's) Pedro Martinez. He was with the major league team that came to Japan in 1996, just before he became a superstar. I'm anxious to see how much he's improved. And I'm anxious to see how much I've improved against him.

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.

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.