You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.
I don't mind being described as vanilla in certain ways.
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.
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.
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.
You don't project yourself in the Hall of Fame as a player. It's only during that five-year period where people start asking about it, and it doesn't seem real until it happens.
When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball.
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.
My dad had premature gray. I was always the one with the most energy, the one who continued to practice longer. I ran up and down the stairs of different stadiums. I didn't feel the need to cover up the fact that I was losing my hair or it was graying. When you're on a team, age is only a factor when you're talking in the locker room.
Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.
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 never set out to do this; I never set out to say, 'Can I break this record?' Then all of a sudden, the preparations made for the celebration put pressure on me. I said, 'Okay, I have to get there.' After 2,130, there was sort of a realization it was a foregone conclusion you're going to play tomorrow.
I see myself as extremely lucky.
When you're an athlete and you play every day and are conditioning yourself every year, the aging is gradual.
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.
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?'
