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American history and the history of baseball are bound up together: our racial politics can be described and traced through it.

Ethnic prejudice has no place in sports, and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.

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

I stand by my belief that individual performances are the most important part of baseball.

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

The biological factors underlying race differences in sports have consequences for educational achievement, crime and sexual behavior.

To me, baseball is as honorable as any other business. It is the most honest pastime in the world. It has to be, or it could not last a season out. Crookedness and baseball do not mix. It has become immeasurably more popular as the years have gone by. It will be greater yet. This year, 1919, is the greatest season of them all.

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game.