I feel very fortunate to have broken in with the Milwaukee Braves organization.

If all of us who love baseball and are doing our jobs, then those who get the game from us will be as proud to be a part of it as we were. And we are. This game is a gift, and I am humbled, very humbled, to accept its greatest honor.

It's my job that if somebody wants to have a discussion about something, I'm certainly sensitive to that, and I'm willing to do it.

Baseball is a team sport played by individuals for themselves.

One win­ter, when I was 12, my older brother Frank (20) said to my father, 'We want you out of the house. We don't want any­thing other than the house we live in. We don't want any­thing from you. Just leave.' And he left.

Golf is the only game I know where you call a foul on yourself.

You get to the big leagues, and you think, 'Can I do this stuff?' Then you take the first pitch down the middle for Strike 1, and you think, 'I could have hit that.'