"As a ballplayer, I would be delighted to do it again. As an individual, I doubt if I could possibly go through it again." Source: Post Game Press Conference

"Candlestick was built on the water. It should have been built under it."

"Every day I went to the ballpark in Yankee Stadium as well as on the road people were on my back. The last six years in the American League were mental hell for me. I was drained of all my desire to play baseball." Source: New York Post (January 26, 1977)

"I don't know if I want to go to New York. They'll have to pay me a lot more money because I like it here in Kansas City."

"I don't want to be Babe Ruth. He was a great ballplayer. I'm not trying to replace him. The record is there and damn right I want to break it, but that isn't replacing Babe Ruth."

"I feel that I was a good all-around player, I had good speed, a good arm and could play the outfield."

"I never wanted all this hoopla. All I wanted is to be a good ball player and hit twenty-five or thirty homers, drive in a hundred runs, hit .280 and help my club win pennants. I just wanted to be one of the guys, an average player having a good season." Source: My Greatest Day in Baseball (Jack Orr)

"I think the most privacy I had was when the game was going on." Source: The Sporting News (August 4, 1973)

"It would have been a helluva lot more fun if I had not hit those sixty-one home runs."

"It's (baseball) a business. If I could make more money down in the zinc mines I'd be mining zinc." Source: Roger Maris (Maury Allen)

"It's like obituaries, when you die they finally give you good reviews." Source: Roger Maris (Maury Allen)

"Maybe I'm not a great man but I damn well want to break the record."

"Now they talk on the radio about the record set by (Babe) Ruth, and (Joe) DiMaggio and Henry Aaron. But they rarely mention mine. Do you know what I have to show for the sixty-one home runs? Nothing, exactly nothing."

"A lot of people wrote that Roger (Maris) and I didn't like each other and that we didn't get along. Nothing could be further from the truth." - Mickey Mantle

"A season is a season, regardless of the number of games." - American League President Joe Cronin

"He (Roger Maris) was not in the classic sense - a Mickey Mantle or Harmon Killebrew or Willie Mays - a power hitter. He was a very good line-drive hitter, who was playing in exactly the right ballpark and hitting just ahead of the exact right cleanup hitter." - ESPN columnist David Halberstam

"I don't think he (Roger Maris) wanted his record to be broken. I think he would be happy for Mark and proud for his accomplishments. He would have been proud of Mark as a player, but I think more so as a person." - Roger Maris, Jr.

"I think back and I really feel for what he went through, for all the negative stuff that was going on in his life. I wish it didn't happen." - Mark McGwire

"I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of all of this. Writers, tape recorders, microphones, cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris lost his hair the season he hit sixty-one. I still have my hair, but when it's over, I'm going home to mobile and fish for a long time." - Hank Aaron

"I've posed with some real major leaguers, not bush leaguers like he is. He couldn't carry my bat. He didn't hit in two years what I hit in one." - Rogers Hornsby

"Let me tell you about him. I gave him one point for speed. I do this because he can run fast. I give him another point because he can slide fast. Then I give him a point because he can bunt. I also give him a point because he can field, very good around the fences, even on top of the fences. Next, I gave him a point because he can throw. A right fielder has to be a thrower or he's not a right fielder. So I add up my points and I've got five for him before I even come to his hitting. I would say this is a good man." - Casey Stengel

"Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was." - Mickey Mantle

"Roger (Maris) was a class act and I know exactly what he went through." - Mark McGwire

"When he (Roger Maris) hit it, he came into the dugout and they were all applauding. I mean, this is something that's only happened once in baseball, right? And the people were all applauding. They wanted him to come back out. He wouldn't come out, so the players had to push him back out. They forced him to come out and take a bow. That's the kind of guy he was. He was great, and I really liked him." - Mickey Mantle

"When Ken Griffey, Jr. breaks Roger Maris single season home run record, he should get three asterisks: one for batting indoors, one for hitting a juiced baseball and one for inheriting superior genes." - Sportswriter Bernie Linciciome

"Up Your Asterisk" - 1962 banner seen in Yankee Stadium