In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the bigs.

When I was a minor league player, my goal was to be a major leaguer. It's no different as a minor league manager.

When I was growing up, I always had the dream of being an analyst for a minor league baseball team or something like that.

You know, I was once named Minor League Player of the Year... unfortunately, I had been in the majors for two years at the time.

If you look at poker as a sport like baseball, then I'd be maybe a minor league or high school ballplayer. But I play with T-ballers.

Football, I thought, would be a tough sport to make a living in. There is no minor league. You either make it to the NFL or you don't.

I think about my dad and how tough he had it. They treated us a lot better in our minor league system, especially with the food. But the bus rides were no joke.

Minor league umpires are evaluated in their respective leagues each year and rated numerically. This enables umpires to know where they stand and helps them make prudent career decisions.

I am involved in minor league baseball. I go around the country speaking to troubled youths, trying to help them understand that whatever path they choose, they'll need to really pay attention to it.

I stayed attached to baseball through the kids and through minor league baseball, and I'm very satisfied with the schedule it allows me to have, which means I'm home until my kids go off to college. I value that time.

I can remember going to see the minor league Orioles. Until I was 15 years old, we'd go down with 3,000 people to watch them play the Syracuse Chiefs or the Jersey City Little Giants. That's what passed for Baltimore sports.

Umpires, like players, are expected to show constant improvement each season and at each level. Inconsistent plate work and the inability to handle situations are probably the two biggest problems that minor league umpires face.

You can't say it's good when guys out there are signing minor league deals and they would be big league players on 80 percent of the teams, but why would a team sign a player when you can pay dirt, and they're not going to win anyway?

Athletes who take to the classroom naturally or are encouraged to focus on grades should be able to do well in the classroom. I believe the reason you go to college is to get your degree. It's not a minor league or an audition for the pros.

When there were just eight teams in each of the big leagues, I was always told, 'It's hard to come up, but it's just hard to stay in the big leagues.' That's because there's always somebody. The Cardinals had so many minor league clubs and had so many good ballplayers.

I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don't want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Major League Baseball has the best idea of all. Three years before they'll take a kid out of college, then they have a minor league system that they put the kids in. I'm sure that if the NBA followed the same thing, there would be a lot of kids in a minor league system that still were not good enough to play in the major NBA.

My father was a San Francisco firefighter. He also was an amateur artist. Art ran deep on his side of the family, which originated in Spain. He painted our portraits. My mom, Jacqueline, was Scots-Irish. They met in 1947 when dad played for the Houston Buffalos, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals.

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