My favorite ability in a player is the combination of aggressiveness and patience.Collection: Patience
I know that one day I won't be good enough to play baseball anymore. But as long as I have an opportunity to, I want to keep fighting.
I legitimately would like to drive a yellow bus when I'm older so I've actually thought about - I want to be either a crossing guard or drive a yellow bus. Drive the kids to school or let them cross to school so, you know, that's something I'm excited about. I'm serious about that. I think that will be great.
In this league, if you're going to be tested, you have to answer quickly. I feel like if you show signs of weakness, people attack that pretty quickly.
One of the advantages of playing in a smaller market is that I can go back to Toronto, or all across the States and never be recognized. I get to go out to dinner, walk my dog, or go to the mall and nobody knows who I am.
I will admit when I was 16, 17 years old, the thought of playing for the Jays was at the top. There's something about joining a club and being embraced by a club and then building a relationship and commitment to a team.
My objective with men at 2nd and 3rd is to get one quality pitch to drive them in. If it's not available, I'm going to go to first base. I won't make any apologies about that.
I think if I let the team's performance dictate how I behave or how I perceive my performance, or whether or not there's value, or whether or not anyone even cares, it's a dangerous and slippery slope.
I follow basketball. That was always one of my passions and enjoyed watching it. I appreciate how athletically gifted those guys are. Just never got into hockey.
I just do my best to put the ball in play and put it in play where no one's going to make a play on it and hopefully drive some runners in.
Personally, until Mike Trout came into the league I thought I would be in the conversation for best player in the game. Then he screwed that up for everybody - Babe Ruth and Ted Williams included. He has ruined it for everyone.
I think it's very difficult to have fewer opportunities to have success and still execute. My favorite player was Barry Bonds, and he got so few opportunities.
If you give a guy 1,000 opportunities and he hits 30 home runs or 500 opportunities and he hits 30 home runs, it's not the same thing. I know. This is what I do for a living, and I know who is better at what I do.
Seeing certain players join certain teams, basically throwing off the entire power dynamic, more or less removing any chance of any other team sharing in success, I just - no.
I'm grateful for the things I've faced in my career because they make me better - every single one of them.
I feel like I've got a process swing. It takes a long time to get to where it needs to be and to stay there. The advantage - if I'm healthy - more often than not, it tends to stay there.
I just want to be in the middle of the order, playing solid defense, playing every day, being competitive and earning that my manager, the coaching staff, the front office, my teammates have faith that I'm going to be a helpful teammate. I want to do that until the very end.
I have been very fortunate to see some very clearly excellent players play well to the very ends of their career, where they opted not to play anymore. I'm talking about Adrian Beltre. I'm talking about Torii Hunter. I'm talking about David Ortiz, Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter. These are players who decided, 'You know, I've had enough. That's good.'
I want to be great at what I do. I take a lot of pride in it. And I try not to sell myself short in my work and preparation.
Some players just have the natural stroke that you throw them in the lineup and all of the sudden they turn on a ball and hit it out of the ballpark.
I know a lot of athletes, they want to play until their 45 or 50 or whatever, some athletes claim, but count me out on that.
Cincinnati is a prettier city than people give it credit for, I like it here, like the people. They're so polite.
I, personally, have standards that I have set for myself. I'd like to achieve those and look back without regret.