Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players, and you keep them in the right frame of mind, the manager is a success. The players make the manager. It's never the other way. Managing is not running, hitting, or stealing. Managing is getting your players to put out one hundred percent year after year. A player does not have to like a manager and he does not have to respect a manager. All he has to do is obey the rules. Talent is one thing. Being able to go from spring to October is another. You just got caught in a position where you have no position.
I cannot get rid of the hurt from losing, but after the last out of every loss, I must accept that there will be a tomorrow. In fact, it's more than there'll be a tomorrow, it's that I want there to be a tomorrow. That's the big difference, I want tomorrow to come.
I managed 26 years and found out when I retired I didn't own the game. I thought I owned it when I was managing all those years. You can climb to the top of the mountain, get down on your knees and kiss the ground, because you'll never own that mountain. That mountain is only owned by one single person, and he'll never give it up. That's the way baseball is.
If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win-unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?