For being book smart, I thought he (A. Barlett Giamatti) had a lot of street smarts, which is tough to find sometimes.

A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure.

We need three kinds of pitching: left-handed, right-handed and relief.

One time in spring training, we had the hit-and-run on, and Carl Erskine threw me a curve and I struck out into a double play. I came back to the bench and Casey [Stengel] said, 'next time, tra-la-la.' I didn't know what tra-la-la meant, but next time up, I hit a line drive, right into a double play. When I sat down, Casey came over and said, 'Like I told you, tra-la-la.'

You sweat out the free agent thing in November, then you make the trades in December. Then you struggle to sign the guys left in January, and in February I get down to sewing all the new numbers on the uniforms.

The rules are changed now, there's not any way to build a team today. It's just how much money you want to spend. You could be the world champions and somebody else makes a key acquisition or two and you're through.

If I managed the Cubs, I'd be an alcoholic.