The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

I’m just glad I play for Coach Belichick.

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

People 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.

I have two Golden Boot awards at home. It would be nice to win another, but I wouldn’t mind it if I didn’t.

Even the best and biggest teams in the world do not reach finals of tournaments.

The only thing wrong with the NBA – or any other professional sport, for that matter – is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

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.

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.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

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.

You’re not going to see my sense of humor on the football field. That’s not a place for me to joke around.

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘

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

When we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

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

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

I used to dream about taking the ball ‚round the keeper, stopping it on the line, and then getting on my hands and knees and heading it into the net. When I scored against Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final, I nearly did it. I left the keeper for dead, but then I chickened out.

The 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.

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.

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 make impact plays. I make game-changing plays.

How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.

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

Any 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.

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.

I 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.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

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

It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

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.

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world’s best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

Obviously everybody, if you’re playing in the league, you’ve got to have somewhat of an ego about how you play the game.

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

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.

I 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.

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

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

There’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.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

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

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

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

No one knows what to say in the loser’s locker room.

When 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.

Talking to a player helps, but in our sport the majority of learning happens from watching another player. You pick up things like being punctual, being nice to everyone, making sure you give your 100 per cent even in training.

I’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.

The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

I used to tease Joe Louis by reminding him that I was the greatest of all time. But Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.

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

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.

Ali’s got a left, Ali’s got a right – when he knocks you down, you’ll sleep for the night; and when you lie on the floor and the ref counts to ten, hope and pray that you never meet me again.