I think I earned the players' respect, and that's the ultimate in life, isn't it? I didn't care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.
For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
The manager is by himself. He can't mingle with his players. I enjoyed my players, but I could not socialize with them so I spent a lot of time alone in my hotel room. Those four walls kind of close in on you.
I played with Joey Mullen back in Salt Lake City before he got called up to St. Louis. He was the first player ever to score 20 goals in the American League and 20 in the NHL. I've kept in contact with him and he's a great guy.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Managing can be more discouraging than playing, especially when you're losing because when you're a player, there are at least individual goals you can shoot for. When you're a manager all the worries of the team become your worries.
It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
And if there come the singers, and the dancers and the flute players - buy of their gifts also. For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and fod for your soul.
Forget about every other lesson in the book. You have to be able to tap your foot or else none of what you doing you are not gonna have any control of your symptom.
I have three tools at my disposal - my whistle, my body language and my talk. It is a question of how I marry them up to try to get the players around to my way of thinking.