Ordinarily, players fine-tune their match-fitness during the pre-season.

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

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.

Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.

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.

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.

I like to get out and get up the court, using my speed and aggressiveness toward the hoop.

A coach, especially at a college level – much more at a college or high school level, than at a pro level – you’re more of a teacher than an actual coach.

The brain is a muscle, and I’m a kind of body-builder.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.

Winning the title in England is the biggest challenge of them all.

There is something special which rides on a game between Liverpool and United.

Jiu Jitsu is a great workout both mentally and physically. You want to be strong for it and flexible for it.

Every night on the court I give my all, and if I’m not giving 100 percent, I criticize myself.

I’ve taken countless shots in my life, so you know the ones when you’re in rhythm, with a perfect release, and it’s on track, that it’s going in.

I just want to do well with the national team.

What the ISL has done is create the hype and buzz around football that it very badly needs.

I see myself as the best footballer in the world. If you don’t believe you are the best, then you will never achieve all that you are capable of.

I have now exactly the same weight I had when I was 18, 20.

In Boston, they love their sports celebrities. And it’s great.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

I love watching track and field – the 4×100 relay, the 100-(meter) dash, the 200-(meter) dash. To see what they’re able to do, I love watching that.

I’d just as soon play tennis with the net down.

I love soccer, love tennis… Roger Federer has been a favourite for a long, long time. The kind of consistency he has shown, 16 Grand Slam titles… The way he handles himself in pressure situations is admirable… He is so calm… In soccer, I’m a huge fan of Barcelona… I like watching Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and David Villa.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

The day I think I’m not enjoying the game and contributing the way I would like to, I’ll hang up my boots.

I worked out a lot before I was 20. I was hard underneath. I had just a little padding. I was quilted. Always Chanel.

Shooting the ball is a part of the game. Everybody can shoot in their own way. Not everybody can make. But everybody can shoot.

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.

Once it gets down to single-digit games, you know the season’s end is approaching, and we’re all pretty physically tired.

I don’t think a coach becomes the right coach until he wins a championship.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water.

When I was playing, there were always lots of teams in contention for the league – Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Leeds. Every week was a big game and a big battle.

My grandfather was one of the very, very first, if not the first, Samoan wrestlers to become known on a worldwide basis.

I like playing. I wouldn’t be a good coach. I don’t have the patience to be a coach.

Football is unconditional love.

I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.

The more minutes you play and the more grind and physical play you endure through the course of a season, you have to re-charge and get your body right for the next season. Be in that weight room and conditioning and that kind of deal.

Glutes are power.

I’m a golfer, and what are the two sports you can do till you drop? Golf and surfing. They’re great for you limber-wise, they’re great for you health-wise, and they put you in sweet locations.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

I used to play a lot of different sports. Now when I look back, I understand that it really helped with my hand-eye coordination.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

Be a player; don’t play yourself. And don’t play basketball. That’s not your sport, Jeb Bush.

I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes – my kids, high school kids – get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in earning money from the sport you love. If you work hard and get benefits from it, there is no harm. The day you feel that you are not working hard and are only looking at the benefits, that’s where the problem is.

I really love training and being in good shape, and it’s so much a part of my life now, so it never really feels like work to me.

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.

To share the dressing room of club and country with Bhai was an amazing experience. I learnt a lot from him and other senior players like Renedy Singh.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.

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

I signed for Mohun Bagan and then I got the news that Bhaichung also joined the club. The first day he met me he told me that I have heard about you and you are doing well. I told everyone in my family and friends that Bhaichung told me that.

Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.

An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head – big darkness, soon come – but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.