I 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.

Baseball 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.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

My family supported me a lot and my father flew in to stay with me from time to time.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

The 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.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

My mother graduated from high school at 15 and went to work to support the family because the eldest son went to college.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.

When 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.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.

I 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.

Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

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.

As 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.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

Any teammate of mine that had a kid and a boy that was capable of playing baseball, I think I set a terrific example of ‚Don’t do this‘ and ‚Don’t do that.‘ And that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.

I declared bankruptcy, and that was the worst thing I ever should have done.

I 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.

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

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

All 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.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

Before 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.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

Phil 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.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I’ve enjoyed doing the games. I don’t ever go to the park where I don’t have a good day. I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

I still enjoy watching a batter successfully cross home plate, but nothing thrills me more than seeing the Holy Spirit at work in hearts as the Gospel is carried into stadiums, across the airwaves, and around the world.

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

If a guy hits .300 every year, what does he have to look forward to? I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

Career highlights? I had two – I got an intentional walk from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

I 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.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life… it’s money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.