Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Confidence of Champions

"I'm judged the way I should be judged," said Rodriguez, who was booed after popping out in the third inning. "I make an awful lot of money, and I'm a talented guy. I put myself in this situation, and I expect all the criticism. It motivates me."

Alex Rodriguez, quoted in "After a Game to Forget, a Home Run to Remember,"
by Tyler Kepler, New York Times, May 11, 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/11/sports/baseball/11yanks.html

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Baseball’s Gettysburg Address

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?

Sure I’m lucky.

Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy?

Sure I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies -- that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter -- that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body -- it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed -- that’s the finest I know.

So, I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.

Delivered by Lou Gehrig, 4 July 1939, at Yankee Stadium.