Baseball Player

My long-range mission is to be the first athlete to win the Nobel Prize.

The Cubs are due in sixty-two.

It's a beautiful day for a ballgame... Let's play two!

I guess my critics say, 'He must be crazy. Nothing can be that beautiful.' But when you think that there are so many people around the world who have nothing, you realize how lucky you are to be making a living in the big leagues.

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way.

Loyalty and friendship, which is to me the same, created all the wealth that I've ever thought I'd have.

No, I think the pitching today has more depth.

People ask me a lot about the values I got from playing for the Cubs for so many years. The value I got out of it was patience. A lot of people these days are not very patient.

I don't think it's up to black athletes to get involved in political or racial issues.

Mr. Wrigley believed in this: Put all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket. They don't do that today. This is the old-fashioned way I'm talking about. He carried it on to his business. Do one thing and stay with it.

Everybody believed you had to have a big piece of lumber and then muscle the ball over the fence. But by the time I and Hank Aaron - another guy who did it with his wrists - were through, there were a lot of guys ordering light bats and playing handball.

Awards mean a lot, but they don't say it all. The people in baseball mean more to me than statistics.

I like my players to be married and in debt. That's the way you motivate them.

Work? I never worked a day in my life. I always loved what I was doing, had a passion for it.

When you do things to try to help people and share things, it really comes back to you. I try to do that.

The Cubs are gonna shine in sixty-nine.

It was about 105 degrees in Chicago. And that's a time when everybody gets tired. I came into the clubhouse, and everybody was sitting around, and I said, 'Beautiful day. Let's play two!' And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. There were a couple of writers around, and they wrote that, and it stayed with me.

You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren't happy in one place, chances are you won't be happy anyplace.

My theme is, 'The spirit of friendship is the balance of life.' Not money. Not the World Series. It's friendship. The relationships I have with people, that's enough to keep me happy.

I meet a lot of people that grew up with my career and have retired, and I just want to talk to them. I like to get a feeling from them, a feeling of the old times.