Pete Rose

“I had an addiction to play baseball.”

“With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.”

“If baseball wants to get you, they've got enough resources and enough investigators that they'll find a way to get you.”

“I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.”

“There is no doubt that because I am a switch hitter I have one of the best offensive advantages that a hitter can have.”

“I've never looked forward to a birthday like I'm looking forward to my new daughter's birthday, because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.”

“Some of my biggest friends are big-time horse owners.”

“My body is my best asset.”

“Sometimes, when you don't have spark, someone in the dugout has to create something.”

“I bet on baseball in 1987 and 1988.”

“Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.”

“I look at the records, and you don't win the Cy Young seven times or the MVP without being a good player.”

“When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.”

“I'm not going to go back to gambling; I mean, it's as simple as that.”

“I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.”

“Umpires got power, man. You ever notice if you go to a ballpark and there's a close play on first base, they will not run the replay at the ballpark? I've seen umpires go underneath and call up and say if you run one more of those replays, we're gonna forfeit the game. That's how strong their union is.”

“When you ask people about guys they didn't like because they were aggressive, there's me, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors; not too many names would come up.”

“I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.”

“Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.”

“Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.”