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Leisure is the handmaiden of the devil.
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If things don't come easy, there is no premium on effort. There should be joy in the chase, zest in the pursuit.
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Trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.
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Baseball is a game of inches.
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I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault.
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Problems are the price you pay for progress.
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A full mind is an empty bat.
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All I had was natural ability.
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Never surrender opportunity for security.
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A great ballplayer is a player who will take a chance.
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Ethnic prejudice has no place in sports, and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.
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I don't care if I was a ditch-digger at a dollar a day, I'd want to do my job better than the fellow next to me. I'd want to be the best at whatever I do.
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Cobb lived off the field as though he wished to live forever. He lived on the field as though it was his last day.
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It is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind.
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The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of our game is the black race.
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Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
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Thinking about the devil is worse than seeing the devil.
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The man with the ball is responsible for what happens to the ball.
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Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.
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Baseball people are generally allergic to new ideas; it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms, and it is the hardest thing in the world to get Major League Baseball to change anything-even spikes on a new pair of shoes-but they will eventually...they are bound to.