I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.

When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than (Ty) Cobb.

Every time I step up to the plate, I expect to get a hit. If I don't expect to get a hit, I have no right to step into the batter's box in the first place.

When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.

Sure I do, and if someone paid you six-thousand dollars a game, you'd have fun as well.

I'd be willing to bet you, if I was a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball.

Am I still in uniform? Then I ain't retired.