Jessica Mendoza

“I'm different. Like, I recognize that, and I need to make sure that I am as prepared, that I understand, that I've done everything I can, knowing that people are gonna wanna say, 'She doesn't belong.' I wanna prove to them I do.”

“Like, I played baseball with all boys. They didn't want to play catch with me. I mean, it's the story of everything I've done.”

“As an Olympic athlete, especially a female Olympic athletic, social media's such an amazing place, people are so positive, all these young girls. Anything negative is such a small space, people aren't coming at you for their gender.”

“In college, I was failing almost every class I was taking my freshman year. I was having difficulty in managing my time; I was just overwhelmed. Even though I knew I was smart and knew I was good enough, at that point, I doubted all of it because I struggled to handle my sport, classes and social life all at once.”

“Own your differences and don't always try to fit in. The more unique you are, the more you stand out.”

“My husband actually quit his job as a civil engineer so that he could travel, so we could be together as a family while I played professionally, which was crazy.”

“That's what's beautiful about sports in general is you give someone a bat, a ball, a piece of sporting equipment and what it does to help them just be better people, 'to get out of whatever situation they might be in temporarily for that moment, to be whoever they want to be.”

“We see women on the field; we see them interviewing players, we see them coming out of the dugout. But if you put them in the booth - like, hold up, wait a second - you haven't been there before. This is different.”

“I know I might be a little crazy, but I love working out. It has a way of lifting my mood like nothing else can.”

“Stanford opened up a whole different perspective for me. I learned how to take my own passions and apply them to so many different topics, to open up the way I saw things and own the things that made me unique.”

“I've learned to not forecast anything beyond the year, because when I went to Stanford, I originally wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. So it's just hilarious to look back at all of the things I wanted to do.”

“You don't need to be an athlete to enjoy the outdoors.”

“I try not to think about it as much when I'm working, it's more just doing my job, but I realize I have more of a responsibility than probably your everyday analyst.”

“Being in New York for 10 days during the World Series and appearing on a bunch of shows, I felt like it was a trial run to have more of a studio presence. The more consistently I started to do it, the more I grew to love it. It allows me to push baseball ideas and content in a bunch of different places.”

“It should be common knowledge that women and men can talk about sports.”

“After a Sunday night game, what I do is I usually wait like a day and a half before going on Twitter.”

“I always said this as an athlete, 'Practice like you're the worst player on the field. Play like you're the best.'”

“It started with 'A League of Their Own.' I mean, to me, if you played softball or baseball as a girl growing up, that is the staple movie, like, where girls are portrayed as athletes, and real, like, different, from Madonna, you know, to Geena Davis. I mean, I could quote that movie, every single line.”

“A female voice can automatically trigger a reaction. The reasons why? Sound is the initial thing, and I've had people tell me that.”

“When you think about success - whether it be in softball, getting into college or becoming an 'American Idol' singer - whatever your goals and aspirations are, you're going to have to stand out at some point if you want to succeed.”