Crossroads

My parents taught us to keep our eyes open and to trust our feelings about people. If you did that, you could trust that person enough to let them show you who they are

One time back in the third or fourth grade, my mom came to school to get me, and I had to be excused to go home and make up my bed. All the kids were laughing at me. My mom had been warning me to make my bed, telling me, "One more time, and I'm going to come to school and embarrass you." She never had to do that again.

For me it was a trip just being on the same feld as guys I'd watched on TV just a few months ago. Hank Aaron helped me with that. "Respect them," he told me, "but don't gawk at them and don't idolize them, because youre going to have to beat them."

One time in 1972, I threw my helmet down out of frustration, and I got an earful from Hank. "Don't throw that helmet, boy, put it back on the rack," he told me. "And don't throw that bat either. It's not the helmet's fault or the bat's fault that you struck out. Sit down and figure out how to get him next time."

I was watching NBC's Game of the Week with Curt Gowdy and he was interviewing Rod Carew about how to hit the breaking ball. Rod said once you identify that it's a breaking ball, you have to hit the breaking ball with imagination. You hit it where it's going and not where you see it. The light came on for me. I never was great hitting the breaking ball, but I got better because I had an idea and a philosophy.

For my bench coach, I kept Bob Lillis. Bob never told me what to do or not to do. He would only say, "Did you ever consider?" citing his experience and make me think that possibly I had a better option

Alex was the most sure handed guy I had. He makes that play ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and they would have turned two because Cabrera wasn't that fleet of foot. This time, Alex didn't make the play. All this is baseball. People are always looking for explanations. Sometimes there aren't any. Things happen you can't explain, and you can't plan ahead of time

Team leaders are anointed, not appointed.

Baseball is a teacher. It teaches you to look past the disappointment of an hour ago or a day ago or a year ago. If you carry one at-bat into the next, you've already lost. You have to let it go. No one can let it go all the time, but you live that lesson, every day, for enough months, enough years, enough decades, it starts to settle deep inside.