In baseball, you have to remain calm, cool, and collected. In football, you can let out a little anger sometimes. It was a fun game, and I liked it, but I knew in my heart I was going to play baseball.
One of my fun road trips was [when] a group of guys and I rented a tour bus and we started in Orlando and drove all the way around the country going to baseball games. That was an awesome trip because each night we would go to a new baseball stadium, watch a baseball game, get in the bus, wake up [in] the next city, go to another baseball game. We did this for a little while and it was great. We called that trip the Rats on the Bus and it was a fun trip.
I just wanted to play baseball because I liked baseball. I never was giving up on football.
I grew up playing football and baseball and moved on to play college baseball, and, you know, as a kid, my dream was to play professional baseball.
The professional game, in a lot of ways, sucks. It's not fun like 11-year-old baseball was or college baseball or high school baseball.
We in the Negro leagues felt like we were contributing something to baseball, too, when we were playing. We played with a round ball, and we played with a round bat. And we wore baseball uniforms, and we thought that we were making a contribution to baseball. We loved the game, and we liked to play it.
The way that I was taught to play baseball, and to me the way baseball has always been, is... Look, we play 162 games. It's a grinding, hard-nosed game. And even when I was a kid it was about not showing up your opponent. It was about playing the game with class. But, obviously I think you should have fun doing it.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You "take in" a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
Sports like baseball or baseball are easy to dramatise, because all of them have a pause and that helps with the tension. Football never stops. I'm a football fan. I believe in the beauty of the game.
You'd got a baseball game, or a football game, basketball game, "USA! USA! USA!" Hey, calm down! Got a little German on it, don't you think?
Basketball has always been a sport I loved and grew up playing. For me, it was one of those things that... I guess baseball was just in my genes a little bit. I have a lot of cousins that played baseball. Basketball is not an easy sport - you definitely got to be gifted to play that game. I felt like I was pretty good at it, but my ability was better in baseball.
I got into baseball, and everyone just started calling me a geek, like, 'There's the nerd from Harvard.' Then it took 20 years of working in baseball and me actually leaving and going to football for people to say, 'He's the baseball guy.' So maybe at some point I'll be known as a football guy too.
I knew at a young age, whether I was playing baseball or hockey or lacrosse, that my teammates were counting on me, whether it be to strike the last batter out in a baseball game or score a big goal in a hockey game.
I was a fan of baseball growing up. We played baseball; I used to play in an A&P parking lot. It wasn't always easy to find a good baseball field to play in.
People like to have fun, and what better way to have fun than go to a football or baseball or basketball game in Vegas?
Having a father as a football and a baseball coach, I grew up around college baseball players, college football players, like, I just knew sports my whole life.