"I get fired because I'm not a yes-man. The world's full of yes men. The first year that I became the Manager in 1969 with the Twins, I won a Division Championship. And got fired. The Tigers hired me. I had made $35,000 and the Tigers gave me a big raise. I won another Division Championship and got fired again. Then Texas hired me with a bigger raise. I came in second, and I got fired. The Yankees hired me, and tripled my salary. When I got fired there, Oakland hired me and gave me an unbelievable raise. I've got a long-term contract now, but if I get fired again, I might run for President." Billy Martin.

"What do Michael Jackson and Steve Sax have in common? They each wear a glove on one hand for no apparent reason." Johnny Carson. Dodgers Pedro Guerrero committed several hard-to-believe fielding errors during one game. At the same time Dodgers' 2nd baseman Steve Sax was undergoing his horrendous fielding slump in which he couldn't throw the most routine ball to first without trouble. Tommy Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous motivational meetings and zeroed in on Pedro Guerrero: "How can you play third base like that? You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball. What is it?" "Two things," Guerrero said. "What's the first thing?" "God, don't let them hit the ball to me." "And what's the other thing?" Lasorda said. "I'm thinking: "Don't hit it to Saxxy either."

"The Mantle legend, which began with his signing, grew during a special rookie camp the Yankees had in 1950. There, some of the old-timers in the organization got a sense that they were seeing something rare; A true diamond in the rough. Mantle’s potential, his raw ability, his speed, his power from both sides of the plate, were almost eerie. If his talent were honed properly, they thought they were quite possibly looking at someone who might become the greatest player in the history of the game. There were some fast players in that camp, and one day someone decided that all the faster players should get together and have a race. Mickey Mantle, whose true speed had not yet been comprehended, simply ran away from the others. What had made some of the stories coming out of the camp so extraordinary was the messenger himself: Bill Dickey; The former Yankee catcher, a Hall of Fame player, and a tough, unsentimental old-timer who had played much of his career with Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Tommy Henrich. He was not lightly given to hyperbole. Bill Dickey started talking about Mantle to Jerry Coleman, the veteran second baseman, with superlatives that were unknown for him: "Jerry, he can hit with power righty, he can hit with power lefty, and he can outrun everyone here.... He’s going to be the greatest player I’ve ever seen." A few days later Dickey grabbed his old teammate Tommy Henrich. "Tom, you should see this kid Mantle that played at Joplin. I’ve never seen power like that. He hits the ball and it stays hit. He’s really going to be something." Even the sound of his home runs, Dickey said, were different, mirroring something Ted Williams would say years later: The crack of the bat against the ball when Mantle connected was like an explosion. Tommy Henrich simply shook his head: It was one thing to hear about a coming star from an excited journalist, but quite another to hear it from someone like Bill Dickey." "The Kid From Joplin." David Halberstam.

"Ted Williams flew as my wingman, on about half the missions he flew in Korea. During his crash, he was on fire and had to belly land the plane back in. He slid it in on the belly. It came up the runway about 1,500 feet before he was able to jump out and run off the wingtip. Much as I appreciate baseball, Ted to me will always be a Marine fighter pilot." John Glenn. "I liked flying. It was the second-best thing that ever happened to me. If I hadn’t had baseball to come back to, I might have gone on as a Marine pilot." Ted Williams.