When I step forward on the floor, I have the confidence that I’m the best player playing that night and that I am the most prepared at what I need to be doing.
Stephen CurryYou throw batting practice, you warm up pitchers, you sit and cheer. You do whatever you have to do to stay on the team.
Bob UeckerAny top-level athlete, it’s always the same. There’s always that hint of arrogance there… It’s hard to be humble when you’re the best.
Conor McGregorI used to soak my mitts in a bucket of water for about two days. Then I’d put a couple of baseballs in the pocket and wrap it up with a rubber band. Today you don’t have to do that, because catchers‘ mitts are more like first baseman’s gloves.
Bob UeckerWhen you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
Dwight D. EisenhowerTo me, football is so much about mental toughness, it’s digging deep, it’s doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.
Tom BradyPhil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.
Bob UeckerWhen we have the ball, the other team has to run. The most important thing is for the players to be prepared to be a little bit wild.
Jurgen KloppWhen we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.
Woody AllenIt never bothered me when people would say, ‚You only win championships because you’re playing with Shaq.‘ It bothered me when he said it.
Kobe BryantI need to do well and show I’m a worthy driver in F1.
Lando NorrisThe nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.
George BestThe black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime.
Jackie RobinsonI had no future with the Dodgers, because I was too closely identified with Branch Rickey. After the club was taken over by Walter O’Malley, you couldn’t even mention Mr. Rickey’s name in front of him. I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known.
Jackie RobinsonYour teammates give you the confidence. They give me the confidence all year, all postseason.
LeBron JamesLike a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
Thomas SowellI’ll do whatever it takes to win games, whether it’s sitting on a bench waving a towel, handing a cup of water to a teammate, or hitting the game-winning shot.
Kobe BryantI won’t be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat.
Babe RuthFloat like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Muhammad AliPeople think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.
Conor McGregorNext to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.
Herbert HooverIn my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.
Jackie RobinsonIt’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Mark TwainWhen I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth, I looked in the other team’s dugout and they were already in street clothes.
Bob UeckerIn the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.
Virat KohliAll I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don’t know except it looked good.
Babe RuthTo be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who they think is the better player. It is what it is, but there is no rivalry beyond games and what happens on the pitch.
Cristiano RonaldoI signed a very modest $3,000 bonus with the Braves in Milwaukee. And my old man didn’t have that kinda money to put out.
Bob UeckerThe true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.
Tom BradyPeople have asked me a lot of times, because I didn’t hit a lot, how long a dozen bats would last me. Depending on the weight and model I was using at that time – I would say eight to 10 cookouts.
Bob UeckerI’m more than comfortable just sitting back and scoring 21, 22 points or whatever and getting 10, 11 assists whatever the case might be. More than comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of the pieces that you have around you and what you can do to elevate everybody else.
Kobe BryantI’m not going to fight because I mean too much to our team, and I can’t afford to be suspended for a game or do something stupid to get me kicked out of a playoff game.
LeBron JamesBefore broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.
Bob UeckerBaseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.
Babe RuthThere’s been a lot of talk of me being a one-man show but that’s simply not the case. We win games when I score 40 points and we’ve won when I score 10.
Kobe BryantI know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.
Stephen CurryObviously everybody, if you’re playing in the league, you’ve got to have somewhat of an ego about how you play the game.
Stephen CurrySome people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.
Conor McGregorHow do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.
Bob UeckerI didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.
Babe RuthI’ve never fought with anyone. A lot of people talk to me, and they’re like, ‚Oh, you would have been fighting all the time when you were younger,‘ but I’m like, ‚I never fought with anyone because I always knew that if I hurt myself, I might lose important time in my cricket career,‘ so I never got into any fight, ever in my life.
Virat KohliIt would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.
Jackie RobinsonI knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.
Bob UeckerBaseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.
Bob UeckerOnce you get on the playing field it’s not about whether you’re liked or not liked. All that matters is to play at a high level and do whatever it takes to help your team win. That’s what it’s about.
LeBron JamesI hate letting my teammates down. I know I’m not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don’t feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win.
LeBron JamesPoets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
Robert FrostI played football for a team called the East Dragons on the east side of town. We only had six regular season games. And six games I played tail back and I had 18 touchdowns in six games. That’s when I knew I had some athletic ability.
LeBron JamesI think that at the start of a game, you’re always playing to win, and then maybe if you’re ahead late in the game, you start playing not to lose. The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.
Tom BradyBaseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
George Bernard ShawAs soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.
Babe RuthYesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.
Babe RuthI make impact plays. I make game-changing plays.
LeBron JamesIn all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.
Jackie RobinsonPop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.
Jackie RobinsonThe way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
Babe RuthSome say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.
Erma BombeckWe have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.
Stephen CurryYou must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table – mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.
Robert GreeneOne rule that will work if it is used everywhere, is that when you have a free-kick, the referee puts the mark on the floor to make sure the defenders keep their distance.
Cristiano Ronaldo