It's easy to sit there in the dugout when the game's going on and talk, chitchat about this and that. But I think paying attention, watching the pitcher, watching the game develop, putting yourself in situations you're not even in yet, anticipating the game, stuff like that, I think that really helps you take that extra step.

Learning how to slow the game down is the biggest thing.

I'd say the challenge of DHing is going to be learning the routine and to stay loose and stay warm and kind of be ready for it.

The last thing I wanted to do was get buried in Triple-A behind prospects.

It's so hard to win a World Series.

That's why, to me, Spring Training is so hard, because every time you go up there, there's a new pitcher, and you have to come up with a new plan.

Any time you go into the playoff game everyone's adrenaline is high and tensions are going, stuff like that.

Contrary to everyone's belief of 'J.D. is a launch-angle guy. He wants to get the ball in the air and this and that.' This is true, but you're not trying to force situations, trying to force things.

I don't go up there and try to hit home runs.

I believe that you're a hitter first and you're a slugger second type deal.

To me grinding out a good at-bat is pretty much fighting. And it's not trying to do too much with pitches, just finding a way to spoil a good pitcher's pitches, really.

If a pitcher goes up there and he's throwing a ball and it's a breaking ball down and away or a fastball up and in, a perfect pitcher's pitch, and you're able to just foul it off and stay alive in the at-bat, just keep grinding, keep working through the at-bat and hoping for that mistake that he's going to make. And if he doesn't, then you walk.

I think my failures in Houston is what made me who I am. I think it's given me that drive, that drive to keep working, because you never know what can happen type deal.

I always talk about it like I'm a hitter first and if I'm doing things right and my body's in the right place, I drive the baseball.

Detroit will always have a special place in my heart.

I really judge me on me.

I'm going to tell you right now, no one is harder on me than me. The fact that fans sit there and boo me, I'm booing myself when I'm walking in.

Obviously, I love Boston. I love the passion. It kind of matches my personality. The fans, I almost feel like they're just as passionate as me.

I'm always just grinding and figuring out what adjustment I need to make and how to tweak my swing to where I want it to be for that game and that pitcher.

I preach about getting the ball in the air.

Whenever you see me and I'm hitting ground ball after ground ball, you know I'm not feeling right.

Kids want to see relevant teams.

You want to see the team that is in the playoffs.

I think about my journey sometimes.

You play 162 games so let's say 100 of them come down to the end where you see the game is out of reach one way or the other. I feel like the other 62 are close games so you're going to be into those at-bats. If you do that, that's 100 at-bats. That's almost a month worth of at-bats where you're not as focused as you might be in those 62.

Man, it literally starts from after the game. I get every at-bat sent to me from the game. I'll go home, I'll watch every at-bat, kind of break down the game, kind of see, OK, what did I do? Why'd I miss this pitch? Why'd I hit that pitch?

I think I've grown over the years and learned about who I am and what I can do and what I can't do.

I was able to play alongside, in my opinion, the best hitter with Miguel Cabrera and kind of watch the way he goes about it and the way he looks at situations, when to try to drive a ball versus when to shoot a ball.

I never pressure anyone to believe what I believe. It's their choice. But when guys ask me, I'm always open, and I share.

I love to talk about hitting. It's a passion of mine.

I never go a day without talking to either my mom or dad, and my sister is one of the smartest people I know.

I had to make baseball work. I threw myself into it.

Stanford's law school application wasn't the standard combination of college transcript, LSAT score, and essays. It required a personal sign-off from the dean of your college: You had to submit a form, completed by the dean, attesting that you weren't a loser.

We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job.

My military service is the thing I'm most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can't help but tell myself I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.

Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.

Every two weeks, I'd get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.

We spend our way to the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.

The idea that working a blue-collar job and living in a working-class community provides barriers that are unique to your circumstances - that's not a very controversial subject anymore. I think it's something that people on both the Left and the Right probably accept.

I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me... Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me.

Airing the family's laundry can make people upset.

To serve in the modern military - or to be the uncle, parent or sibling of one who does - is to treat the necessary service and sacrifice of war with a sacred honor. In my community, we pile into cars and drive hundreds of miles to watch our children's graduation from basic training.

There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.

I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead.

If you think about what folks have been doing for 20 or 30 years, they have been bottling frustration and resentment that the political elites don't understand them, that the political elites don't care about them, that the political elites judge them in various ways. All Donald Trump does is provide the opposite of those things.

My grandma would say if someone else calls you a hillbilly, you might need to punch them in the nose. But if we call ourselves hillbillies, it's a sort of a term of endearment, something that we have co-opted.

People in my hometown voted for President Reagan - for many, like my grandpa, he was their first Republican - because he promised that tax cuts would bring higher wages and new jobs. It seemed he was right, so we voted for the next Republican promising tax cuts and job creation, George W. Bush. He wasn't right.

It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse. And I've suspected that this optimism blinds many in Silicon Valley to the real struggles in other parts of the country. So I decided to move home to Ohio.

Faith gave me the belief that there was somebody looking out for me, that there was a hopeful future on the other side of all the things I was going through.

Barack Obama was elected during my second year of college, and save for his skin color, he had much in common with Bill Clinton: Despite an unstable life with a single mother, aided by two loving grandparents, he had made in his adulthood a family life that seemed to embody my sense of the American ideal.