I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.

A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard.

I have goals and ambitions, and I see myself as a lifelong baseball student. I have certain philosophies that I'd like to test at some point at the big league level. The job of manager appeals to me, a coach appeals to me, at a different time frame.

I think Nick Markakis is a perennial All-Star, and nobody knows about him. I think people are learning about how good he is.

When I was younger, I had a fear of being judged as a footballer, and my worst fear was feeling like I didn't belong at the level of football I was playing.

My mother's sobriety - that's when I found the theater, that's when I moved from being a basketball player to being a musician, to being an actor, to then being a writer.

Some of the most innovative things in football I see at high school games. It's not the play - it's when you run it. The right time.

I've always said, if everything was equal, from money to retirement to endorsement opportunities - all that stuff - if everything was equal, I'd play Arena football over the NFL. It was built for quarterbacks. It was just backyard football.