"You gotta have fun. Regardless of how you look at it, we're playing a game. It's a business, it's our job, but I don't think you can do well unless you're having fun."

 

 

"When I put on my uniform, I feel I am the proudest man on earth."

 

"I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give."

 

"I tell you, (Steve) Blass, you pitch me inside, they never, never find that ball."

 

It's supposed to be fun, the man says 'Play Ball' not 'Work Ball' you know."

 

 

"Through the years I've been getting better and better and better, and it's what you learn through the seasons."

"What happened to me should teach everybody that you should never give up on anybody."

 

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

 

"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."

 

"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."

 

"As long as I have fun playing, the stats will take care of themselves."

 

"My dad (Ken Griffey) would have bopped me on the head when I was a kid if I came home bragging about what I did on the field. He only wanted to know what the team did."

 

"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all."

 

"I'm not a big guy and hopefully kids could look at me and see that I'm not muscular and not physically imposing, that I'm just a regular guy. So if somebody with a regular body can get into the record books, kids can look at that. That would make me happy."

 

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

 

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life."

 

 

"Whether your name is (Lou) Gehrig or (Cal) Ripken, (Joe) DiMaggio or (Jackie) Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out. That's all I've ever tried to do."

 

“Keep it simple”

 

 

“Individual glory is insignificant when compared to achieving victory as a team.”

 

“It's fun. It's fun to be able to come out and see the kids smile and see them get excited.”

 

 

“Never limit yourself, never be satisfied, and smile—it’s free!”

 

“My family vacations were softball tournaments.”

 

“My life has been centered around sports. It is where I have met my closest friends and shaped the values that have made me a successful athlete, student and role model for young people.”

 

 

"God, I just love baseball." - Robert Redford in The Natural (1984)

 

"Do you know what we get to do today Brooks? We get to play baseball." - Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid) in The Rookie (2002)

 

"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again." - James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams (1989)