Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
Robben is more of a one-on-one individualist. He's a player who can decide a game.
I think I've been fortunate to be at the top of the game and in the media for years, and a lot of times, people want to be your friend when you're on the top. You know, there have been times when I've been injured and I never got a phone call. So that's the way it is.
Maybe you're not having a thousand times more injuries, but there's an aspect to the purity of the game and the quality of the game that is played on grass that is different on turf.
I never understood that when I heard people retire - they said they missed being around the guys. I don't have a need to make a play in the ninth inning of a game anymore. But being on the inside and being part of a team is something that you really do value and you really do miss.
We've got to decide, how much replay do we want? Because if you start doing it from the first inning to the ninth inning, you may have to time the game with a calendar.
Coming into a game in the eighth or ninth inning is like parachuting behind enemy lines. And sometimes the chute doesn't open. You have to live with that. It's an occupational hazard.
Life's like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you wake up and find out it's the ninth inning.
One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.
You never know when you're going to throw a no-hitter or if you're ever going to get the chance to do it. It's one of those deals where the ninth inning comes around; it's either going to be your night or just a complete game.
There is nothing like Ruth ever existed in this game of baseball. I remember we were playing the White Sox in Boston in 1919, and he hit a home run off Lefty Williams over the left-field fence in the ninth inning and won the game. It was majestic. It soared.
I'm learning from my past mistakes and trying to correct them as I move forward. Experience at the international level has probably taught me what it takes to probably go out there and get a 100 or to build an innings or to win a game.
My game is such that I either succeed or fail. But I always hope to do something which is useful to the team at the start of the innings.
The cutter has really helped me stay in the game longer and helped me get past the five, six innings a little more consistently.
Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.
Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.
I would bet you that even though people think I absorbed an inordinate number of head injuries, I'd say relative to the number of guys who have played this game, I would say that my head injuries were relatively small.
It's been years since I've had a real input in the game anyway. For this game, I've just tried to keep all the other stuff away from the players and coaches.
You learn as a player not to listen to the criticism. Many of the people who put out that criticism might not be as accomplished, might not understand the game as well from the inside-out.
Not long ago, in response to a spell of insomnia, I learned some of the principles of meditation, to empty my mind piece by piece. It was like the old game of jacks - cautiously lifting each jack clear of its neighbor until only the empty background remained.
