"There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they are going to come after me hard. … It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."

“We are not the cowboys anymore — we are just the idiots this year … So we are going to go out and try to swing the bats, find the holes, and, hopefully, good things happen. … We were just a bunch of cowboys out there last year, just enjoying every minute … Now, we know we have something to prove. We don’t want to be remembered as a team that, OK, we keep making it to the playoffs, but we keep having tough losses. … I mean, we want to be known as a team that rewrites the history books. … This is definitely the best ballclub I’ve been on. I mean, that Oakland ballclub in 2001 was pretty awesome. We were a bunch of frat boys there. This team is a little older, but we have that same attitude. We feel like we can win every game, we feel like we like to have fun, and I think that’s why this team is liked by so many people out there. … You know, the kids watching us out there — we’ve got the long hair, we’ve got the cornrows, we got just guys acting like idiots. And I think the fans out there like it.”