Even though it feels like you are so far away from the big leagues, my love for the game kept me motivated to get through the hard times in the minors.
Aaron Judge
I think a lot of people look at athletes in general and think they have everything figured out. They made it to the big leagues... We're battling and going through the same stuff everyone else is going through, but just in a different way. Maybe it can be comforting knowing that we have to battle through some of the same stuff.
Anthony Rendon
Growing up, you think about playing in the big leagues one day. But to this scale, and winning a World Series in your hometown, I don't think you could have planned that.
If democracy is to survive Facebook, that company must realize the outsized role it now plays as both the public forum where our strident democratic drama unfolds and as the vehicle for those who aspire to control that drama's course. Facebook, welcome to the big leagues.
Antonio Garcia Martinez
Life is so fast. And I still remember when I came up to the big leagues and played as if it were yesterday. Time flies.
Asdrubal Cabrera
I want to finish my career in Cleveland. They gave me the opportunity to play in the big leagues.
I looked up to my father when I was 7 and 8. I believed it was my calling to be in the big leagues. I'd been raised by a family that always told me I could do anything I wanted.
Barry Zito
I offer a proven track record in the big leagues that can hit left-handers or right-handers.
Billy Butler
As I look out there and see the culture of baseball, a lot of blacks and Latins, it's given me a lot of joy to know that Jackie started that. If Jackie hadn't come in '47, me and Ron Santo wouldn't have played in Double-A and all those years in the big leagues.
Billy Williams
Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship - and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.
Bob Uecker
Hey, I think it's easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it's a much greater accomplishment. That's hard.
Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.
My first year in the big leagues, I made $17,000. It was easy to go out and get another $17,000 relief pitcher. I never worried about innings or pitches. I just pitched.
Bruce Sutter
I feel like a pioneer with the split-fingered fastball. I was the first one to really throw it pretty much 100 percent of the time. It was a pitch that I had to have. If I didn't have it, I wouldn't have been in the big leagues.
I only wish I could have played in the big leagues when I was young enough to show what I could do. When an offer was given to me to join up, I was too old, and I knew it.
Buck Leonard
Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.
Cheech Marin
Everyone wants to pencil you in as the kind of player that you're going to be after a few years in the big leagues. When you're still really young, they think that's what you're going to be forever.
Christian Yelich
If you hit a routine fly ball in the big leagues, you're out every time. If you hit a ground ball, you're probably out a lot of the time as well. But there's a happy medium in there, a way to swing where your misses can still lead to successes.
I'm really thankful for the opportunity the Marlins gave me. They drafted me in 2010 and gave me a chance to play in the big leagues. I made lifelong friends there, and I've got a lot of great memories.
It's one thing to make the big leagues, but it's another thing to make it to an all-star game.
When you're a kid, you just hope you make it to the big leagues. So to get to go say you're going to play in the World Series, it's an incredibly special moment. Up there with getting married and having kids, it's right up there with one of the best days of my life.
There's a lot of variables you can't control in trying to win a game, but at the end of the day it does mean something to win a game in the big leagues and be on the mound.
I know what a full season is like in the big leagues. It's not going to be a surprise anymore.
If I don't make the team out of spring training, I'll keep a good attitude. I'll just go polish up the parts of my game that made me not stay in the big leagues.
I was such a screwup when I got to the big leagues. I was a total idiot.
Sooner or later you learn that you belong in the big leagues, and that makes you calm down.
I was in the big leagues my first year in pro ball - pretty fast. I really don't think I had an understanding of what it meant to be a pitcher at that level at that point.
Judging ballplayers and turning in reports, giving my opinion of who will get to the big leagues and who will not... I think my baseball judgment was really good.
I guess my critics say, 'He must be crazy. Nothing can be that beautiful.' But when you think that there are so many people around the world who have nothing, you realize how lucky you are to be making a living in the big leagues.
Everybody in the minor leagues - if you're a player, an announcer, whatever - wants to be in the big leagues.
I would love to get back to the big leagues as a coach, possibly a manager. I would love that opportunity.
With my quality, I feel I can bring a lot to a team that I will join. I want to show it in the big leagues: England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France.
In England, somewhere. I want to be at a big team, in the big leagues again.
My managerial ambitions were the same as I had as a player: to become as good as possible and to join the big teams in the big leagues.
The more that Japanese players go to the big leagues to play and succeed, the more that will serve to inspire young kids in Japan to want to become baseball players when they grow up.
It was a dream of mine to play in all the big leagues.
You can say baseball's fun, you're in the big leagues, you get to come to a Major League field every day - and, yeah, that's great. I love it.
When you get to the big leagues, the talent pool is on such a level playing field, you have to find a way to separate yourself from incredibly talented guys. Especially when you go through the injuries that I've had, you come back, and you might not physically be able to do some of the things you used to do.
I have been playing soccer since I was about four years old. You always hope you can reach the top of the profession, that you can play in the big leagues and achieve all of the goals you hope to accomplish throughout your life.
A ball player has to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family has ever made the big leagues.
If anyone wants to know why three kids in one family made it to the big leagues they just had to know how we helped each other and how much we practiced back then. We did it every minute we could.
You get to the big leagues, and you think, 'Can I do this stuff?' Then you take the first pitch down the middle for Strike 1, and you think, 'I could have hit that.'
When I was 16 years old, my brother Frank said, 'You'd better become a catcher, because you're too big and fat to do anything else.' Well, I took his advice. It was a quick way to get to the big leagues, and I've never regretted it.
I hated baseball. I really didn't like baseball at all until someone decided they were going to pay me... Every year I played in the big leagues, the day the season ended, I called my buddies in West Virginia and said, 'I'll be home tomorrow.'
Just as I'm fortunate to pitch in the big leagues, I'm also fortunate for the time I get to spend outdoors.
You're always going to believe in yourself, and I have to thank God for that, but it's pretty hard to believe that you can make it to the big leagues and that you can possibly get 200 hits three years in a row. I feel very proud.
I couldn't believe I was in the big leagues. I also knew that I have to work hard every single day to stay in the big leagues. One thing is getting to the big leagues; another thing is to stay.
I kept listening in the minor leagues, and even earlier than that, people would say, 'If you don't hit the fastball, you're not going to get to the big leagues.' Every game, you're going to get a fastball.
As a 16-year-old, I was 5-foot-5 and maybe 145 pounds. It was hard to believe a guy like that was going to make it to the big leagues.
This is the big leagues; pitchers throw a lot of strikes. I feel like they attack me. That's why I go up there and swing.
