I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.
As long as I can compete, I won’t quit.
If you do a job, do it right or there is no point.
All I really try and do is live up to my potential and do as well as I possibly could and to bring to the ballpark each and every day a good effort and do the best that I could each and every day.
I’d like to be remembered. I’d like to think that someday two guys will be talking in a bar and one of them will say something like, ‘Yeah, he’s a good shortstop, but he’s not as good as ole Ripken was.’
So many good things have happened to me in the game of baseball. When I do allow myself a chance to think about it, it’s almost like a storybook career. You feel so blessed to have been able to compete this long.
Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.
We consider ourselves the luckiest fans on the face of the Earth.
I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.
Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.
By far, the best moment of my big league career was when I caught the last out at the World Series.
I think Nick Markakis is a perennial All-Star, and nobody knows about him. I think people are learning about how good he is.
I kept thinking, ‘this must be the coolest job – I’d like to be a professional baseball player.’ They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.
The streak has become my identity; it’s who I’ve become.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, you couldn’t say you were better than the other person because you knew you had a secret. You knew you had cheated.
The reality is that players can’t play forever.
As long as I can compete, I won’t quit. Reaching three-thousand is not the finish line as long as I can contribute.
Early in my career, I decided I never wanted to get out of shape.
I don’t love the idea of the responsibility falling on the manager. That just adds to their in-game responsibility.
My approach to every game was to try to erase the games that were before and try to focus on the game at hand.