Time & Perspective Quote by Steve Carlton

The flex is right there in the first clause, then immediately undercut. Steve Carlton starts with the kind of self-assurance elite athletes are trained to project - "best shape of any athlete" - but he pulls the rug out with a rule of the clubhouse: you dont get to grade your own legend.

Coming from a notoriously intense, sometimes aloof ace, the line reads like a defense mechanism wrapped in humility. Pitchers live on control: mechanics, preparation, routine. Carlton is talking about fitness, but the subtext is authority. In sports, especially in an era when players had less public-facing brand polish, claiming greatness outright could make you a target: teammates resent it, media pounces, opponents circle it. So he asserts the standard, then hands the verdict to an external court - results, peers, history. Its a way of saying, I did the work, and I know what it was worth, but Im not going to give you the soundbite you want.

It also hints at the peculiar unfairness of athletic evaluation. Your body can be perfect and the season can still go sideways: a bad defense behind you, an injury, a manager's decisions, the randomness of a ball finding grass. Carlton's point isnt that self-knowledge is impossible; its that self-coronation is illegitimate. The only judgment that sticks is the one that survives outside your own head.