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"Baseball was never my first priority. I didn't think about playing pro ball till I was a junior in high school. I was having too much fun being a kid. My dad and I were gone every weekend, hunting or fishing. He brought me up in the woods."
"Chris Berman [of ESPN] was the first one to call me the Natural. And Bob Brenly gave me the Thrill. I like to leave funny messages on my answering service, even play records on it. Once, I left B.B. King's 'The Thrill Is Gone' on it. That got a lot of laughs. They call my dad Bill, and that's what I'll call my son when I have one. I'm a third-generation native of New Orleans, and I went to the same Jesuit high school as my dad. He was a four-sport star there. I played baseball and basketball. I didn't really commit myself to baseball until my sophomore year. I've been to a World Series in Babe Ruth League level, American Legion and at Mississippi State. And I've been to the Olympic Games. That was something. I met Mark [McGwire] there. I could tell he'd make it. He's so gifted, so big and strong."
"If some people perceive me as being arrogant, then I'm sorry."
"In '87, I proved I could hit the long ball [35 homers]; in '88, I proved I could drive in runs [109]; and in '89, I proved I could hit for average. Now I want to put them all together. I'm a perfectionist. I'm a worker. If there's a duck I want to hunt, it ain't nothing for me to paddle a couple of miles to hunt him. Same with baseball."
"I never go up to the plate without a plan. The plan, however, depends on what you've seen from the pitcher, what his tendencies are, how you're feeling that day, what the game situation is, and what he's most likely to throw at that point in time."
"Pitchers act differently when they get in a bind. Ninety times out of a hundred, they'll stick with their strengths, and if you know what their strength is, you can look for it."
"The big thing people say to me is, 'Why don't you ever smile?' Well, I'm too interested in trying to beat somebody right now to smile."
"The game doesn't change. The pressure stays the same from the Little League to the majors. What does change is the outside elements, all the things that can make you lose focus—the money, the press, the fans. So I tell myself, 'Don't try to impress the people in the stands. Do it for the self-satisfaction.' It sounds greedy, but it relaxes you."
Work is almost an obsession with me. I can be tough to live with. Maybe that's why nobody lives with me. When you live with somebody else, you have to learn to be flexible, and I'm not too flexible."
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