Willie Mays Quotes
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I played with the Birmingham Black Barons. I was making 500 at 14. That was a lot of money in those days.
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In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without one-hundred percent dedication, you won't be able to do this.
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When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But, when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.
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I don't mean to be bashful, but I was
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They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.
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In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated.
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I'm not the type of guy to go out and just say, 'Hey, I'm raising my fist to do this and do that.' I don't think I'm that type of guy. I wasn't a leader the way other people may have wanted me to be.
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In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing
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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.
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What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.
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Youngsters of Little League can survive undercoaching a lot better than overcoaching.
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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.
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Yes, I had to learn how to live life outside, but I had so many people help me.
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I was very fortunate to play sports. All the anger in me went out. I had to do what I had to do. If you stay angry all the time, then you really don't have a good life.
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Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.
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What's tough is being good every day.
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Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business.
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At ten I was playing against 18-year-old guys. At 15 I was playing professional ball with the Birmingham Black Barons, so I really came very quickly in all sports.
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The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have.
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"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."
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Maybe I was born to play ball. Maybe I truly was.
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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.
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I don't rate them, I just hit them.
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I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.