Mickey Mantle Quotes

My chief gifts are - naturally good at all sports with a raw talent for pretty much everything, which if nurtured could develop into improper talent.

It's not the norm, I guess, to see someone as aggressive as me being more or less very athletic. You see me running, having a big, violent hit, it's going to look bad, but that's the natural ability I've been given. Why would I let it run to the wayside and not use it?

The great thing with Usain Bolt is he fell into great coaching, so his talent was exceptional from Day 1. You can coach technique and structure, but not talent.

I think I have just as much talent as anybody when it comes to the 100 or 200.

If you have the athletic ability, why waste it in one sport?

I was running since I was 10. Since grade one at school people looked at me and thought, oh gosh she can really run, she's a natural.

The jury is still out on whether I'm a genius or not.

You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.

I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.

I had jumped about 6.40 metres with no training, no run-up, and certainly no skill, when this big, good-looking guy came up to me and told me I could be great.

To me, when people say, 'Oh, you're a freak athlete,' it's bittersweet. It's a huge compliment to say, 'O.K., you have physical abilities that are kind of above and beyond.' But at the same time, I feel like it diminishes the mental side of the game.

Oh, I never knew I was going to be a great player.

If you talk about natural ability, I think Apollo's probably the most naturally gifted athlete of the new era.

Let's just say the genes were there for me to excel athletically.

Shaq wasn't talented - he was just strong. I was talented, but I wasn't strong.

My thing I liked was to challenge guys that were smaller, guys that were supposed to be quicker. Because I think self-consciously I was trying to prove to people it wasn't just my height that was getting me across in these various sports. It was some other intrinsic things that I had that made me a good athlete.

The more I can get into my brain the more I can produce on the field.

I was a two-star athlete. I got looked over.

I think I chose wisely. When it came down to it, I knew I was a better goalkeeper than I was a bowler.

As naturally athletic as I'm gifted to be, where certain things came easily, I always rely on my brain first.

When you are playing regularly, you feel a lot sharper on the pitch.

I used to be smart.

I'm like LeBron, man. I'm like a smaller LeBron. That's why I'm not in the NBA. If I had about five, six more inches, I'd be in the league.

When you go from Division II to the NFL, you're amazed at how good these guys really are.

I had a little bit of expectations just to be not terrible, because you can't be named so similar to a sport and not be at least adequate at that sport. I don't think there's been expectations to be really good, because my parents never put that kind of pressure on me, but I had to be at least decent.