"A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide." - Mickey Mantle
"After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases." - Mickey Mantle
"All the ballparks and the big crowds have a certain mystique. You feel attached, permanently wedded to the sounds that ring out, to the fans chanting your name, even when there are only four or five thousand in the stands on a Wednesday afternoon." - Mickey Mantle
"As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due." - Mickey Mantle
"But god-damn, to think you're a .300 hitter and end up at .237 in your last season, then find yourself looking at a lifetime .298 average - it made me want to cry." - Mickey Mantle
"Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century." - Mickey Mantle
"Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part." - Mickey Mantle
"I always loved the game, but when my legs weren't hurting it was a lot easier to love." - Mickey Mantle
"I could never be a manager. All I have is natural ability." - Mickey Mantle
"I don't care who you are, you hear those boos." - Mickey Mantle
"I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he'd come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, 'Do you want me to sign it?'" - Mickey Mantle
"I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do." - Mickey Mantle
"If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." - Mickey Mantle
"It was all I lived for, to play baseball." - Mickey Mantle
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life." - Mickey Mantle
"My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me everyday after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad." - Mickey Mantle
"Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was." - Mickey Mantle
"Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'" - Mickey Mantle
"Sometimes I sit in my den at home and read stories about myself. Kids used to save whole scrapbooks on me. They get tired of them and mail them to me. I'll go in there and read them, and you know what? They might as well be about Musial and DiMaggio, it's like reading about somebody else." - Mickey Mantle
"Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been." - Mickey Mantle
"The biggest game I ever played in was probably Don Larsen's perfect game." - Mickey Mantle
"The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know." - Mickey Mantle
"To play 18 years in Yankee Stadium is the best thing that could ever happen to a ballplayer." - Mickey Mantle
"Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball." - Mickey Mantle
"Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball." - Mickey Mantle
"When I hit a home run I usually didn't care where it went. So long as it was a home run was all that mattered." - Mickey Mantle
"You don't realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth." - Mickey Mantle
