Cal Ripken, Jr. Quotes
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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.
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When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball.
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I have goals and ambitions, and I see myself as a lifelong baseball student. I have certain philosophies that I'd like to test at some point at the big league level. The job of manager appeals to me, a coach appeals to me, at a different time frame.
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I never understood that when I heard people retire - they said they missed being around the guys. I don't have a need to make a play in the ninth inning of a game anymore. But being on the inside and being part of a team is something that you really do value and you really do miss.
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Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.
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I don't mind being described as vanilla in certain ways.
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I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.
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Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.
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My dad was part of the Oriole way. I think he was there 14 years in the minor leagues; I think seven of those years, they had the same people in place. So it was about continuity. It was about stability.
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I'm always flattered when someone thinks of me as a potential commissioner of baseball.
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I had trouble with my temper all the way through the minor leagues.
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Even though my dad was a manager in the minor leagues, I still traveled around with him and saw it from the field out. Now, as an owner, you're kind of looking from the whole baseball activity from outside in, from a fan's perspective.
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My approach to every game was to try to erase the games that were before and try to focus on the game at hand.
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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.
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I lived the baseball life as a kid, with my dad in it. And I lived the baseball life as an adult, because I was in it. When I retired, I wanted the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible and home-based for my kids.
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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.
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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.
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You can keep going on and on about the interactions of people, which makes it a great drama and great event, and you'll always hold that special, but if you're looking at a baseball moment, the feeling you get when you win the World Series by far exceeds anything else in the game that you're able to do.
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I stayed attached to baseball through the kids and through minor league baseball, and I'm very satisfied with the schedule it allows me to have, which means I'm home until my kids go off to college. I value that time.
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By far, the best moment of my big league career was when I caught the last out at the World Series.
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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.
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Whether it was Little League or playing with your brothers or sisters, that was always a problem. If I would lose - because I very rarely lost - then everything would go crazy.
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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.
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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.