I can't honestly say that I appreciate the way in which he changed baseball — from a game of science to an extension of his powerful slugging — but h… - Ty Cobb

As a base-runner, I had some pretty radical ideas. Some said I was crazy to take such chances; others were beginning to suspect that maybe I had something. My counter to Criger's challenge had to be something unusual. And when we opened the first Boston series of '08, I watched the Young-Criger battery carefully before coming to the plate. Then I told Criger, "I'm going to steal every base on you today." … On four straight Young pitches, beginning with my single, I'd completed a tour of Boston bases. Our man at bat hadn't taken his club off his shoulder while I was coming around. Criger had been deflated in the worst possible way that can happen to a catcher — I'd told him exactly what I intended to do, and still gotten away with it.

I've been called one of the hardest bargainers who ever held out, and I'm proud of it.

When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. To me it wasn't parchesi played under parchesi rules. Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. Every man in the game, from the minors on up, is not only fighting against the other side, but he's trying to hold onto his own job against those on his own bench who'd love to take it away. Why deny this? Why minimize it? Why not boldly admit it? Many a writer has said that I was "unfair." Well, that's not my understanding of the word. When my toes were stepped on, I stepped right back.