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Baseball is my escape. The sights, the sounds, the way the park smells. There is truly no place I would rather be than at a game.

To me, baseball has always been a reflection of life. Like life, it adjusts. It survives everything.

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.

Baseball hasn't been the national pastime for many years now - no sport is. The national pastime, like it or not, is watching television.

When you are away from the game and busy with other areas, you realize that the world does not revolve around baseball.

Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.

Even though my dad was a manager in the minor leagues, I still traveled around with him and saw it from the field out. Now, as an owner, you're kind of looking from the whole baseball activity from outside in, from a fan's perspective.

Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.

Baseball grew rapidly in favor; the field was ripe. America needed a live outdoor sport, and this game exactly suited the national temperament. It required all the manly qualities of activity, endurance, pluck, and skill peculiar to cricket, and was immeasurably superior to that game in exciting features.

When I played, I never needed the spotlight, nor did I want it. I simply wanted to play baseball and be respected by my teammates and the opposing players.