Time & Perspective Quote by Nick Johnson

Athlete-speak rarely sounds more human than when it stops pretending to be a press conference. Nick Johnson's "I'll get mine in a few years, when I get up there and when the time comes" is the language of someone standing close enough to the spotlight to feel its heat, but not close enough to touch it yet. The repetition - "in a few years", "when I get up there", "when the time comes" - isn't redundancy so much as a protective mantra. It's a way of insisting that ambition can be patient, that wanting something doesn't have to turn into demanding it.

The intent reads like deflection with a backbone: Johnson is acknowledging a prize (a starting role, a contract, a championship, a legacy moment) without stepping on the toes of whoever has it now. In the culture of team sports, that's not just etiquette; it's survival. Say you're coming for someone's minutes and you become a problem. Say you'll wait and you become "professional", even if the hunger is the same.

The subtext is a quiet negotiation with power. "Mine" signals entitlement earned through work, not gifted by circumstance. The phrase builds a personal timetable that competes with the organization's timetable, while sounding obedient to it. That's the trick: it flatters the hierarchy ("when the time comes") while claiming a future the speaker refuses to surrender.

Context matters because athletes are trained to speak in calibrated optimism. Johnson's line is what aspiration sounds like when it's been edited for the locker room: confident enough to be noticed, careful enough to avoid becoming a headline.