Never miss a practice. Never.
Never be ready to settle for a tie.
Never take an easy opponent lightly.
Never practice without a thought in mind.NANCY LOPEZ, professional golfer
Never bet with anyone who has a deep tan,
squinty eyes, and a one-iron in his bag.DAVE MARR, professional golfer
The one-iron is regarded as one of the most difficult clubs to master, so a golfer who carries one—especially if he’s tanned and squinty-eyed—is likely to be skilled. About the club, Lee Trevino observed, “Not even God can hit a one-iron.” The legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey was fond of giving similar advice, but in a slightly different way: “Never play checkers with a man who carries his own board.”
Never take shit from anybody.BILLY MARTIN, quoting his mother
In an interview during his playing days, Martin cited this as one of the most valuable pieces of advice he got from his mother, Jenny Salvini Martin Downey. The daughter of struggling Italian immigrants who lived in West Berkeley, California, Jenny was a highly volatile and combative woman whose motto was, “Never take no shit from nobody.” Jenny’s second husband (and Billy Martin’s father) was Alfred Martin, a smooth-talking, guitar-strumming womanizer of Portuguese descent. When Jenny found out that her husband was becoming involved with a fifteen-year-old high school student, she tracked the girl down and beat her senseless. Returning home, she gathered together her husband’s clothes and threw them on the front lawn. When Alfred arrived home, the pregnant Jenny (with Billy in her womb) rushed outside and bashed in every window in his car with a hand mirror. The couple divorced before she gave birth. As Billy grew up, Jenny taught him that “Every insult must be avenged” and “To earn respect you have to use your fists.” After Martin’s playing career with the New York Yankees, he had managerial stints with five baseball clubs, most notably the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees. Because of a stormy relationship with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Martin was hired and fired as team manager five separate times. As a player and manager, he had a fiery and combative style that made his mother proud.
When badly overmatched,
never descend to weak dejection or loss of interest.
Play as strongly as you can and keep your self-respect.PAUL METZLER, in Advanced Tennis (1968)
Never fake a throw during a rundown;
you might fake out your teammates as well as the runner.JOE MORGAN, in his 1998 book Baseball for Dummies,
written with Richard Lally
Never look back and never look ahead.CHUCK NOLL
Noll, who was head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1969 to 1991, took the team to four Super Bowl victories, more than any other NFL coach. He added: “The key to a winning season is focusing on one opponent at a time. Winning one week at a time.”
Never let your head hang down.
Never give up and sit down and grieve.
Find another way.
And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.LEROY “SATCHEL” PAIGE
Buck Owen, the legendary Negro League baseball star, said in his 1997 autobiography, I Was Right On Time, that this was his favorite Satchel Paige quote. Another popular Paige quotation was, “Never do nothing till your muscles are loosed up.”
Never try a shot you haven’t practiced.HARVEY PENICK
After serving as the golf coach at the University of Texas for more than three decades, Penick became a favorite trainer of golfers on the PGA and LPGA tour. In 1992, he wrote (with Bud Shrake) Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, one of the most popular golf books ever written. Among the numerous tips he offered on the mental game of golf was this:
Never—I repeat, never—allow yourself to think about
what is riding on a putt.
Never forget that it’s imperative to keep people positive,
because those who are discontented have the potential to infect others.RICK PITINO, in Success Is a Choice (1997)
Never surrender opportunity for security.BRANCH RICKEY, his motto
After a successful career as manager and general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Rickey became general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1942. He is now best remembered as the man who broke major league baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to a contract in 1946 and starting him in a game in 1947.
Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.GEORGE HERMAN “BABE” RUTH
Never let the failure of your last pitch affect the success of your next one.NOLAN RYAN, in Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible (1991),
written with Tom House
Never criticize a player in public.DEAN SMITH
Smith, coach of the University of North Carolina Tarheels for thirty-six years, tried to inspire his players by posting a “Thought of the Day” in the team’s locker room. In A Coach’s Life: My Forty Years in College Basketball, (1999), he wrote this about a saying discussed in the “Classic Neverisms” chapter:
I genuinely believe in one of our Thoughts of the Day used by our team:
“Never judge your neighbor until
you have walked in his moccasins for two full moons.”
Smith also offered these two other thoughts:
Only praise behavior you want to be repeated.
Never use false praise.
Never let anyone play harder than you.
That is the part of the game you can control.
No matter what happens—never give up a hole.SAM SNEAD, in The Education of a Golfer (1962)
Snead finished this thought by saying: “In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast.” With his trademark straw hat and folksy demeanor, Snead appeared to have a casual approach to the game. It would, however, be hard to name a professional golfer with a more competitive spirit. In his career, he won a record eighty-two PGA Tour events, including seven “majors.” His competitive spirit also showed up in these thoughts:
Never let up.
The more you can win by, the more doubts
you put in the other players’ minds the next time out.
Keep close count of your nickels and dimes,
stay away from whiskey, and never concede a putt.
Never room a good guy with a loser.CASEY STENGEL, quoted by Billy Martin
Martin was in his first season as manager of the New York Yankees when Stengel offered him this advice about separating supportive players and bad apples on road trips. “When you make out your rooming list, always room your losers together,” he advised. He added, “Those losers who stay together will blame the manager for everything, but it won’t spread if you keep them isolated.”