I see myself as extremely lucky.

Each and every day had its challenges.

As long as I can compete, I won't quit.

The reality is that players can't play forever.

If you do a job, do it right or there is no point.

The streak has become my identity; it's who I've become.

I don't mind being described as vanilla in certain ways.

We consider ourselves the luckiest fans on the face of the Earth.

Early in my career, I decided I never wanted to get out of shape.

You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.

I had trouble with my temper all the way through the minor leagues.

In the end of the day, I feel pretty good about the contributions you can make.

Quite frankly, I don't miss standing in the box or standing on the field playing.

I didn’t just show up for work, as has sometimes been said. I also showed up to work.

I'm always flattered when someone thinks of me as a potential commissioner of baseball.

I did make a choice when I got away from baseball to be there to get my kids off to college.

Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.

Being elected to the Hall of Fame is about your career pretty much and your impact on the game.

Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.

What keeps me going? I guess it's just a desire to keep trying to contribute and do things in life.

By far, the best moment of my big league career was when I caught the last out at the World Series.

There is somebody in our lives that we could call the Energizer Bunny and we admire for those qualities.

I take pride in the fact that you are able to make some good contributions to the sport at certain times.

Get in the game. Do the best you can. Try to make a contribution. Learn from today. Apply it to tomorrow.

When you're an athlete and you play every day and are conditioning yourself every year, the aging is gradual.

My approach to every game was to try to erase the games that were before and try to focus on the game at hand.

I had a marvelous baseball career and after my baseball career, there is an abundance of opportunity out there.

As long as I can compete, I won't quit. Reaching three-thousand is not the finish line as long as I can contribute.

I don't love the idea of the responsibility falling on the manager. That just adds to their in-game responsibility.

If you really think about it, the stadium can't last forever. There is going to have to come a time when it replaces.

When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?

When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball.

When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?'

That's the result of the black cloud on baseball, .. Until it's rid of steroids, people are naturally going to think that.

I think Nick Markakis is a perennial All-Star, and nobody knows about him. I think people are learning about how good he is.

I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.

Different styles work for different guys... If you can handle shortstop and hit, teams will find a way to pencil you into the lineup.

I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.

The best thing you can do in the whole world is to play baseball. That's a lucky job... The passion for baseball is always going to be there.

Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it's his job to make those decisions about who plays.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, you couldn't say you were better than the other person because you knew you had a secret. You knew you had cheated.

I had aches and pains when I played. No player is ever 100 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent. Guys that play 158 or 162 or 145, we are all in the same boat.

The older you get, the things that you thought you wanted to do when you were younger, you're checking them off your list because you no longer want to them.

Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.

There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.

I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.

I've been asked to interview for many managing jobs, and I never said yes because I was never serious about it, and I thought it would be wrong to go through that process.

Whether it was Little League or playing with your brothers or sisters, that was always a problem. If I would lose - because I very rarely lost - then everything would go crazy.

You don't project yourself in the Hall of Fame as a player. It's only during that five-year period where people start asking about it, and it doesn't seem real until it happens.

The last thing you want to do is go down in the history of All-Star game competition as the only injury (his nose was broken by Roberto Hernandez) sustained during the team picture.

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