"I might have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."

"It's a pretty big shadow (Babe Ruth's) - it gives me lots of room to spread myself."

"There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all."

"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all."

"The Babe is one fellow, and I'm another and I could never be exactly like him. I don't try, I just go on as I am in my own right."

I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. And I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for."

"Well, there's no question about the three greatest and most outstanding ballplayers in the history of baseball have been Ruth, Cobb, and Wagner."

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

"I'm not a headline guy. I know that as long as I was following (Babe) Ruth to the plate I could have stood on my head and no one would have known the difference."

"I worked real hard to learn to play first base. In the beginning, I used to make one terrible play a game. Then, I got so I'd make one a week, and finally, I'd pull a real bad one maybe once a month. At the end, I was trying to keep it down to one a season."

"I just can't understand. I am not sick. The stomach complaint which was revealed last year in three separate examinations I underwent has been cleared up by observance of a strict diet. My eye is sharp, yet I was not swinging as of old. I reduced the weight of my bat from 36 to 33 ounces, thinking a change might work to my advantage, but it didn't. I went back to the 36 and it was the same."

"You have to get knocked down to realize how people really feel about you. I've realized that more than ever lately. The other day, I was on my way to the car. It was hailing, the streets were slippery and I was having a tough time of it. I came to a corner and started to slip. But before I could fall, four people jumped out of nowhere to help me. When I thanked them, they all said they knew about my illness and had been keeping an eye on me."

"Now personally, I was always as tight as a drum before the game, before the World Series game. The constant milling around, the hundreds of photographers, the hundreds of newspapermen, and the thousands of requests for autographs on scorecards and baseballs and things like that. They tend to tense a ballplayer up. But the minute that bell rang and the field was cleared and the first ball was thrown and the first ball hit my glove, then I was just as relaxed and it was just another ballgame after that."

"Well, there's no question about the three greatest and most outstanding ballplayers in the history of baseball have been Ruth, Cobb, and Wagner. Now personally, Ruth was a typical fans' ballplayer. And Cobb was a typical individual ballplayer, because I believe he had more enemies on the ball field than any man in the history of baseball because he played it so hard and he thought of nobody. I mean, cutting or slashing or anything to gain his end, he went through. And yet I think Honus Wagner was the typical ballplayers' ballplayer or the managers' ballplayer, because he was always thinking of winning and doing what he could for the other fellow, for himself, and for his manager and for the fans."

"I decided last Sunday night on this move. I haven't been a bit of good to the team since the season started. It would not be fair to the boys, to Joe (McCarthy) or to the baseball public for me to try going on. In fact, it would not be fair to myself, and I'm the last consideration. It's tough to see your mates on base, have a chance to win a ball game and not be able to do anything about it. McCarthy has been swell about it all the time. He'd let me go until the cows came home, he is that considerate of my feelings, but I knew in Sunday's game that I should get out of there. I went up there four times with men on base. Once there were two there. A hit would have won the ball game for the Yankees, but I missed, leaving five stranded, and the Yankees lost. Maybe a rest will do me some good. Maybe it won't. Who knows? Who can tell? I'm just hoping."