When we went home every winter, they warned us not to lift heavy weights because they didn't want us to lose flexibility. They wanted us to be baseball players, not only home run hitters.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
These days baseball is different. You come to spring training, you get your legs ready, you arms loose, your agents ready, your lawyer lined up.
We worked so hard, spent so much time in weight room and in camps to be where we are today. We wanted to come out and be as good as any team in the state, to prove we could hang with any team at any time.
I wasn't athletic. I played baseball, but I was terrible.
They thought that athletes that worked out with my system wouldn't be able to throw a ball because they'd be too muscle bound. Those are the misconceptions I had to go through for about 40 years.
One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms.
Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, 'We don't work out or we're not strong or this or that.' Guys work so hard in baseball, it's incredible. But people don't know that.
Baseball needs to put the steroids era behind it by having and enforcing tough rules against all kinds of artificial advantages, so that spring can return.
I never lifted a weight in my life. Why am I going to do steroids? That's not going to do me any good. We didn't have any weights in our clubhouse. We had one exercise bike and that was for the guy who tweaked his hamstring. And that thing didn't even work half the time.
I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player.
When I was playing football, I was getting up to 240 pounds, and they wanted me to get to 260.
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