Willie Mays

“I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.”

“If you can do that - if you run, hit, run the bases, hit with power, field, throw and do all other things that are part of the game - then you're a good ballplayer.”

“And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11". So I just picked baseball.”

“Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.”

“I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.”

“When I was in Birmingham I used to go to a place called Redwood Field. I used to get there for a two o'clock game. Where can you make this kind of money playing sports? It was just a pleasure to go out and enjoy myself and get paid for it.”

“It's not hard. When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.”

“Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.”

“Yes, I had to learn how to live life outside, but I had so many people help me.”

“When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.”

“Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.”