ChiefsPlanet - Royals Zack Greinke: The Next Emmitt Smith?

The following is a compilation of quotes from renowned pitcher/wordsmith Zack Greinke of the Kansas City Royals.

"I just wanted to make this clear: I can't live without baseball...It's to the point where it caused problems with my girlfriend because she knows baseball is more important than her. I say, 'Hey, I'm sorry. I love the game that much. You're not even close to being No. 1 -- that's how much I love baseball. I couldn't live without it."

"I cried in bed, moaning 'why, why did this have to happen?'" -- when asked how he reacted to the news of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston breaking up.

"No. She's way more big time than me. She's pretty old too." -- when asked if he thought Jennifer Aniston would date him after the break-up.

"I'd say the average person wouldn't eat a Chipotle burrito and still do his running.. full speed.. like me. That's why they call me special"

"I don't know if we really want to talk about this anymore...it's kind of stupid" -- after talking about golf for about 5 straight minutes in an interview.

"It gives me more time to think or not think, which is a problem." -- when asked what he thought about having an extra day off.

Restaurant customer:"Hey, you're Zack Greinke, right?"
Greinke: looks at him for a second, points at a short, fat Hispanic man next to him, and says, "No. That's Zack Greinke."

"You don't faze me, Gobble." - From one of his mic'd up segment on RSTN, when he's shagging fly balls in the outfield and Gobble runs past right as he's about to catch one.

"I was looking at colleges for me to go to, schools in vacation places like Hawaii, just to get away from everyone I knew, so I could start over. I also thought about mowing lawns for a living because I like to be outdoors. " -- after breaking out of the depression funk he said sometimes he thought about quitting baseball and mowing lawns..

“Because there’s no point to it, I’m not going pro.” -- when asked by a reporter why he had given up the game of golf, even though Greinke was, by most accounts, the best golfer on the Royals at Spring Training in 2008

"If I lived in Kansas City, I probably wouldn't go to a lot of games, but I'd definitely go that one." -- on a pitching matchup where Greinke was facing Daisuke Matsuzaka the second or third game of the year.

Reporter: "Hey Zack, would you mind doing an interview before or after your start tomorrow night?"
Zack: "After is better. Uh, what time does the game start?"
Reporter: "I think it starts at 7:10."
Zack: (With a sly grin across his face) "OK, thanks, now I know."

"Soria, you runnin' today? You're goin' down then. I'm gonna so much faster than you, you're going to be eating my dust." -- talking to Joakim Soria during pre-game warmups.

"I really want to rob a homer today. Really bad. It's all up to the hitters."

"No. Anyone can sign one player." -- when asked if signing Gil Meche to a $55 million deal showed him that the Royals were willing to go out and get free agents to make this team better.

"Well, Davies thinks he's good at everything but he's not really good at anything. He thinks he's good at golf. He thinks he's good at ping-pong. He thinks he's good at basketball. He thinks he's good at tennis. And probably everything else he thinks he's good at. He thinks he's good at cards. But he really is very average at all of them." -- when asked if he knew any surprising facts about his teammates

"Yesterday I saw a good one. I was going to eat, and the person I was with wasn't there yet, so I thought, okay, I'll just watch the sun go down, and it was nice." -- when asked if he had seen any good sunsets in Arizona during Spring Training.

"No. She, like, has a special mouth . . . so that her breath is usually pretty good, but she complains about mine a lot." -- when asked if his girlfriend liked to eat at Chipotle with him.

"It's got to help some other guys, seeing someone as old as he is and playing as long as he has, playing as hard as he is." -- on second baseman Mark Grudzielanek

"Well, one thing is, when you're warming up in the bullpen, they'll spray you sometimes and get you wet." -- when asked what he thought about the fountains at Kauffman Stadium

"There definitely will be flying cars, but whether there'll be flying cars for most people to use, it'll probably take a long time to straighten everything out, all the rules and hassles. It'll take a while to figure out how to keep people from crashing into each other." -- when asked if he thought there would be flying cars in the future.

"No, I'm not a fan of them. We could try to think of someone else we could do it with. But not them." -- when asked if he and his girlfriend would double date with Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson.

"If I hit a guy, I want him to be hurt."

“I was about 20 times smarter before this season started than I am now.”

"Things can go either really bad in two innings or go really good in two innings. You really don't get the whole story." -- on spring training pitching outings.

“Everybody was mad at me for only throwing fastballs and change-ups. So I threw some first-pitch strikes with curveballs. It’s an easy way to get a strike. It’s not like it’s a real hard pitch to throw. You just throw it for a strike."

"Seriously, that was the best pitch I've ever made that got hit over the fence. That was probably the only pitch today that I did exactly what I wanted to do." -- after giving up a home run to Prince Fielder in a spring training game.

"Nice effort by the defense. They didn't get tired of running after balls to the wall. I was pretty impressed by that."

"Me. I'm a better hitter." -- when Greinke was asked by a National League scout, "Should we draft you or Scott Kazmir?"

Those are just the highlights. Updated quotes are frequently posted here:
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=281&f=2054&t=2454952