Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.
I didnt really grow up a comic book fanatic. I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.
I have fun. I always have fun. I don't really get in a hurry about anything. I just try to go with the flow and have fun, and that's how I try to play baseball.
I hope baseball doesn't get to the point where everyone's saying, 'He takes it [steroids]. He takes it. He takes it!' because not all of us do. I've been big my whole life, and I'll always be big. That's all natural.
You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.