I love baseball, and the door remains open.

Hard work is the main thing-hard work and dedication. And I think a great part of it is goal setting. You set your goals to a point where they're attainable, but far enough away that you have to really go get them. And every year I push my goals a little bit farther away, and every year I work a little bit harder to get them. Every goal that I've set, I've been able to achieve. That's been very fulfilling.

Well, you know, I left Cuba as a kid when I was 6 years old back in 1971.

Baseball gets better for whatever reason.

Yeah, I'm going to go back (after hitting his 500th home run, but commenting on reaching the 3,000 hit plateau) to my Punch-and-Judy days, hit the ball the other way, start bunting the ball a little bit.

The tragedy of all of this is that it happened to me and it shouldn't have happened. It ruined my life and my career. That's the tragedy of this.

I wish that they could have more freedoms to be able to come and play. I know that the only way that they can get out is by, you know, defecting to another country or whatever, or getting on a boat