You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be - in baseball and in life.

People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game.

The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can't move unless he has the horses.

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.

Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.

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.

I bet on the game of baseball and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their own team... that's throwing the game.