Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A man has to have goals - for a day, for a lifetime - and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'
Ted Williams, an extraordinary hitter in his day, has said the swing starts in the hips, and Sosa arrived with one of the strongest lower bodies in the game.
Anytime a pitcher hasn't faced a hitter, I feel the pitcher has the advantage. The more times the hitter sees somebody, the more the advantage goes to the hitter.
The bigger the game, the better I liked it. Not that I was about to let anybody know I was excited. I approached every game the same way. One pitch, one hitter at a time.
My dad wasn't a power hitter, and I didn't think I'd be a power hitter because the person I wanted to be like was him, and he was the one that taught me to play the game.
Your goal as a hitter is to get on. And if the third baseman is playing back and letting you lay down a bunt, I don't have a problem with that, even if it's late in a no-hitter.
I've won plenty of games by knowing when to take out my pitcher; whom to replace him with; or how to place my infield or outfield to defend properly against the opposing hitter.
One game, one pitch can change everything for a hitter. The way I like to approach it is that every at-bat is its own unique opportunity to go out there and do something really good.
I was a contact hitter my whole career but I learned how to handle the ball inside. And Ted Williams played a big part in that. He gave me the advice on how to handle inside pitches.
I think I'm a guy who loves to play defense. I have a great time in the outfield. I think it's fun robbing guys on hits - there are plenty of times you're gonna be robbed as a hitter.
You would be amazed how many important outs you can get by working the count down to where the hitter is sure you're going to throw to his weakness, and then throw to his power instead.
There's different kinds of laughs. It's like a baseball lineup: this guy's your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we're gonna win.
The British are actually a lot more appreciative of the comic. In Canada, if you're perceived as a comic writer, there's a real snobbery, and you can't be serious. You're not a big hitter.
Anytime you can see a hitter and face a hitter, you gain knowledge, and you gain that experience. Whether they hit a homerun off you, or you strike them out or whatever it is, it's information.
Drew McFedries was the hardest hitter I've ever been around. A big, strong, athletic guy with power. He didn't have to hit you with a hard shot or load up - even the little short shots could hurt you.
I know when I get to 0-2, 1-2, when I'm ahead in the count, that I hold a distinct advantage over every single hitter. I have so many options because I don't have to work within the strike zone anymore.
Our sister Alma was the best hitter in the family. We used to soak corn cobs in water so they wouldn't fly so far when we hit 'em. Alma was the first to hit one far enough to break a window in the barn.
Preparation is very important. The pitcher is going to do his job and prepare for you, so you as a hitter must do the same. I always watch videotape of pitchers before the game and even sometimes during.
The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, and many believe catcher Josh Gibson was a better hitter than Babe Ruth.
You never want to have Yadier Molina up with the bases loaded in the World Series, but, dammit, you wouldn't want a better hitter up. Maybe that's not the way most people think, I don't know. That's how I think.
We won. The media. We destroyed Barry Bonds, drove him crazy, turned the most disciplined and feared hitter the game has ever known into a fence-swinging hack, drained all the excitement out of his 714 home runs.
Going into Portland, I was just trying to not step on anybody's toes, stay quiet, and play my game. I think I was just trying to figure out the kind of sequences I was going to see as a hitter and learn from that.
There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game.
Traditionally, baseball punishes preening. In a society increasingly tolerant of exhibitionism, it is splendid when a hitter is knocked down because in his last at bat he lingered at the plate to admire his home run.
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 study pitchers. I visualize pitches. That gives me a better chance every time I step into the box. That doesn't mean I'm going to get a hit every game, but that's one of the reasons I've come a long way as a hitter.
There's been times where I've come out of the bullpen thinking I was going to throw a no hitter, and I've lasted two or three innings. So I try not to use my pre-game warm ups as a barometer of how I'm going to pitch.
If I was crazy, I'd throw the ball into the stands with the bases loaded. Now, that's crazy. If I was stupid, I'd throw the ball into center field with the bases loaded and a 3-2 count on the hitter. Now, that's stupid.
I am an arm hitter. When you snap the bat with your wrists just as you meet the ball, you give the bat tremendous speed for a few inches of its course. The speed with which the bat meets the ball is the thing that counts.
Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.
I wonder why there is a designated hitter in baseball after all these years? As an experiment, it seemed like a swell enough idea, but you would think the novelty would have worn off by now and everyone would get back to playing baseball.
I think the biggest adjustment I've made before coming here was going from High A to Double A. I was going in facing pitchers who had more experience and knew how to throw all their stuff for strikes and in hitter's counts, things like that.
Baseball players are not specialists; they all have to do it all. That is why I, and many aficionados, dislike the American League's practice of replacing the pitcher with a designated hitter. This creates two players who do not have to do it all.
There's been a couple of guys who have gotten me. I used to say Adrian Gonzalez. He's a good lefty hitter; he's hit a few home runs off of me. They were a couple of mistakes, so if you make your pitches, you're more likely to have a better outcome.
I don't think I'm a home run hitter. Most of my home runs are line drives. If I hit it, thanks God. But it's not the kind of thing that I think about. I just go out there and try to have a better season than I had before. Home runs are not in my mind.
When I'm out there on the mound, I'm fighting for my teammates, fighting for the ability to stay in the game for a long time. It's war. I see the hitter - I think about what I want to do, but it's a very quick process. Then I attack. It's almost primal.
I consider Billy Keeler, Mike Tiernan, Ed Delihanty and Larrie La Joie the toughest hitters I had to pitch to, but I did not dread them. Remember, Hughie Duffy was a member of our team, so I did not face him. In my opinion, Duffy was the greatest hitter.
I'm always amazed when a pitcher becomes angry at a hitter for hitting a home run off him. When I strike out, I don't get angry at the pitcher, I get angry at myself. I would think that if a pitcher threw up a home run ball, he should be angry at himself.
I had to lower my hands, I had to work my hips a different way. I also had to stride to get the power. I'd always been a standstill hitter and had to generate power from my upper body. Basically, I had to change everything I was doing. It was really difficult.
There's so much attached to playing shortstop that you lose your concentration on hitting, unless you're a natural hitter. There's so much to think about in the field, you don't have time to think about what you did at the plate last time. 'How did he get me out?'
For me, it's about finding ways. Obviously I'm not a great hitter, but I'm going to try and beat you anyway I can. I think about that in every aspect of the game. Running? I'm not the fastest runner, but I can steal a base. For me it's about taking advantage of what I can.
That's one of the great oddities of baseball: Success is relative. A hitter who fails 70 percent of the time at the plate is a potential member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and many World Championship teams lose more than 70 games during their title-winning seasons.
The big thing I noticed from High-A to Double-A is that when you have an advantage count as a hitter, you're not going to get as many fastballs. Adjusting to the 2-0 changeup, that 3-1 off-speed pitch - things like that. I think my swing can stay the same; I just was getting myself out.
Joe Morgan was the one guy that absolutely put our team really over the top. ... Then we had George Foster come in; Ken Griffey Sr. was as good a two-place hitter as there has ever been in the game, and Cesar Geronimo won four Gold Glove awards. I mean, how could you ask for a better team?
You should have seen Willie Wells play shortstop: as good as Ozzie Smith and a better hitter. How I wish people could have seen Ray Dandridge play third base, as good as Brooks Robinson and Craig Nettles and all of those. He was bowlegged; a train might go through there, but not a baseball.
I know where my game is. I know I'm a power hitter and an RBI guy. I need to get on base for my teammates behind me and just stick with my game. I don't try to do too much. Sometimes when you try to do too much in this game you pretty much can't do anything. And that's pretty much my mentality.
There was a time when rival teams used a shift against me. They would put the second baseman on the shortstop's side of the bag, move the shortstop into the hole to his right, and have the third baseman hug the foul line. The idea was to build an infield wall against a known right-handed pull hitter.
You reach a point where you're trying to survive. You're just trying to put the ball in play. You're not yourself. You're searching for your identity as a hitter on a nightly basis. That's just really hard. And it is not atypical at all for players to need to change their environment in order to rediscover who they are.
It just tickles me still when you see Roger Clemens, as great as he is, throw a split-finger and the hitter just swings and misses. They don't see that ball that well. Jack Morris threw an awful good one and Mike Scott. There's a lot of great pitchers over the years that I think that pitch definitely helped their career.
If an umpire misses a called third strike and the other side ends up scoring because of it, I'm not going to forget it. If there are runners on second and third and two out, and if the umpire has just given the hitter an extra strike and the next pitch goes into the hole and both runs score, I've got to say something to the guy.