Cal Ripken, Jr. Quotes

"You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball."

"Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens."

"When you're in the day-to-day grind, it just seems like it's another step along the way. But I find joy in the actual process, the journey, the work. It's not the end. It's not the end event."

"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 see myself as extremely lucky."

"I don't mind being described as vanilla in certain ways."

"My dad was part of the Oriole way. I think he was there 14 years in the minor leagues; I think seven of those years, they had the same people in place. So it was about continuity. It was about stability."

"Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention."

"You learn as a player not to listen to the criticism. Many of the people who put out that criticism might not be as accomplished, might not understand the game as well from the inside-out."

"I had trouble with my temper all the way through the minor leagues."

"When you're an athlete and you play every day and are conditioning yourself every year, the aging is gradual."

"I had one of my best years in 1991; I was 31. I made a renewed effort to work harder. I got better at my diet. I paid attention to how much sleep I got. I was always someone of routine. I became more strict."

"When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball."

"I'm not trying to be a star on TV. I am who I am, which I hope comes out. I have a little bit of a different sense than most people know, and it takes a while to get used to it."

"The older you get, the things that you thought you wanted to do when you were younger, you're checking them off your list because you no longer want to them."

"I've been asked to interview for many managing jobs, and I never said yes because I was never serious about it, and I thought it would be wrong to go through that process."

"I did make a choice when I got away from baseball to be there to get my kids off to college."

"A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard."

"There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal."

"When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?'"

"Whether it was Little League or playing with your brothers or sisters, that was always a problem. If I would lose - because I very rarely lost - then everything would go crazy."

"My approach to every game was to try to erase the games that were before and try to focus on the game at hand."

"Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it's his job to make those decisions about who plays."

"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."

"I lived the baseball life as a kid, with my dad in it. And I lived the baseball life as an adult, because I was in it. When I retired, I wanted the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible and home-based for my kids."

"I think Nick Markakis is a perennial All-Star, and nobody knows about him. I think people are learning about how good he is."

"Normally, some people think about 50 as a big moment in life. I kind of think 30 because in your baseball career, 30 was considered on top kind of looking at the end of your career. So I remember thinking about 30 in different ways, but 50 just seems like another step right now."

"I stayed attached to baseball through the kids and through minor league baseball, and I'm very satisfied with the schedule it allows me to have, which means I'm home until my kids go off to college. I value that time."

"Quite frankly, I don't miss standing in the box or standing on the field playing."

"Being elected to the Hall of Fame is about your career pretty much and your impact on the game."