Baseball has been the greatest things in my life, but the cameras and the media surrounding baseball have not been fun. It's unnecessary. How many times do they see me stretch? How many times do they see me walk? It is a big concern. If it affected the team in a negative way, I don't know what I would do.

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.

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

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

August in Kansas City is hotter than two rats f**king in a sock.

I've always prided myself in not reveling in past accomplishments and focusing on future achievement, instead. That's been my career motto.

I heard that in the United States the level of baseball was the highest in the world. So it was only natural that I would want to go there, as a baseball player.