Quotables 18 May 2024: Baseball great Reggie Jackson on the value of ‘the will to win’, Mickey Mantle, tolerating failure versus accepting it, the batter’s box belonging to him alone, and bringing his star to New York City

1977 Topps baseball card for Reggie Jackson

Words of wisdom from the all-time excellent right fielder Reggie Jackson, born on this day, 18 May 1946, in Abington Township, Pennsylvania:

‘The will to win is worthless if you don’t get paid for it’.

‘Just like every other kid in my grade school, I was listening to my little radio plug in my ear when Mickey Mantle hit 18 post-season homers and won series after series for the Yankees. I listened and I learned from that. I think he was the original "Mr. October", but thank god it didn't stick’.

‘I feel that the most important requirement in success is learning to overcome failure. You must learn to tolerate it, but never accept it’.

‘Fans don't boo nobodies’.

‘I’m a businessman. I bring my bat and glove and attache case to the office and go to work. I don’t give a damn if the other workers at the office like me or not’.

‘When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my convenience. The pitcher was there to throw me a ball to hit. The catcher was there to throw it back to him if he didn’t give me what I wanted the first time. And the umpire was lucky that he was close enough to watch’.

‘There are at least three kinds of advantages that the pitcher and batter contest. There’s the physical advantage, the strategic advantage, and also the psychological advantage. I didn’t want two out of three. I wanted them all’.

‘So many ideas come to you and you want to try them all, but you can't. You're like a mosquito in a nudist colony, you don't know where to start’.

‘In the building I live in on Park Avenue there are ten people who could buy the Yankees, but none of them could hit the ball out of Yankee Stadium’.

‘I didn’t come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me’.

Quotes via https://www.azquotes.com/author/7277-Reggie_Jackson, https://quotefancy.com/reggie-jackson-quotes, and https://www.allgreatquotes.com/authors/reggie-jackson/

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