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

I need to do well and show I’m a worthy driver in F1.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

We all started playing football against our best friends, and I can’t remember a moment where, because it was my best friend, I did not want to win against him.

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

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

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.

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

I’m proud to play for Real Madrid because I have fun; when you no longer have fun it’s a sign that it’s time to leave. For now though, I’m happy here at the greatest club in the world.

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.

A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper.

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

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.

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.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

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.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

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.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

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.

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.

You 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.

It’s rule number one, really – beating your teammate.

It never bothered me when people would say, ‚You only win championships because you’re playing with Shaq.‘ It bothered me when he said it.

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.

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

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

To 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.

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

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

We have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

Endorsements are a reward for good performance on the field, and the commitments made after signing them need to be done.

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

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

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

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.

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

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.

I’ve always been an unselfish guy, and that’s the only way I know how to play on the court and I try to play to the maximum of my ability – not only for myself but for my teammates.

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

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.

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.

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

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

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.

Losing is not an option in Kolkata. It’s not easy, a lot of players even quit.

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

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.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

When 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.

I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager Herman Franks came out to get him, he was bringing Herbel’s suitcase.

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.

People 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.