"There are 52 weeks in a year. I always wanted to make a grand a week." - after signing a 5-year contract for $52,000 per season "The only game, I think, in the world is baseball." "I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands." "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way." "It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." When asked if he had any superstitions: "Just one. Whenever I hit a home run, I make certain I touch all four bases." "I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat." "All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good." "The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." "If I'd tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around .600." "I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can." "Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder." "All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill." "As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher's mound. It was as if I'd been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy." "Don't ever forget two things I'm going to tell you. One, don't believe everything that's written about you. Two, don't pick up too many checks." "If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery." "Why not? I had a better year than he did." - when asked why he should be paid more than the President of the United States after signing an $80,000 contract in 1930