Baseball is going to end some day. I realize that as soon as you retire you know, people forget about you in this game fast! There's the next young guy coming up that's always better than you. So, for me, it's just about using baseball as a platform to do a lot of things.

I started really believing and understanding what it meant to be a follower of Jesus when I was probably in high school sometime. From there, just trying to draw on my faith since then.

Baseball could end tomorrow but you're just understanding that God is in control of it and we are not.

I think more than anything, just putting in perspective what this baseball thing means and understanding that it is a gift and I didn't do anything to deserve that and realizing that if we continue to look to God to guide our path, you never know what could happen.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God's Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

One day, at my office, I wrote down some names and dates and notes, and I wrote a title, 'The Age of Despair,' and then some other 'Ages' - Innocence, God, Reason, Hope - and I wrote this as well: 'Woman, born in 1930, lives till the age of 80 or so, suffers depression, marries a car dealer, has children who grow up to confuse her.'

God has levels of willing and delighting. He wills and delights in things in different ways so that approval and disapproval can coexist without being contradictory, without canceling each other out. I am making the case here for infinite complexity.

People don't understand that all presidents, the minute they become president, get a knock at the door. And there's a man there saying, 'Let's talk about your funeral.' At the time I thought, God, that's a terrible thing. Later on, I thought it was pretty wise.