Pitching Quotes - page 4
You feel like a stud out there when people swing and miss. As I've gotten older, I've preached to our young guys that strikeouts are sexy, but outs are outs, man, no matter how you get them. It's a lot cooler for me pitching in the seventh or eighth inning than it is going 5 1/3. Your manager likes it a lot more, too.
Tim Hudson
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.
Arnold Hano
In that one moment, during an era in which sluggers threatened to take over the sport, Carl Hubbell had restored to pitching its true eminence. The man with skill in his arm, courage in his heart, and craft in his brain, could still set down the brute man with the club. It meant more than a man striking out great hitters; it stood for baseball's interpretation of man's growth. We have come away from men with clubs and dim brains. Hubbell's performance those five outs was baseball's way of representing all this, of representing the contest between brains and brawn. Never was brawn so thoroughly routed.
Arnold Hano
In pitching, control is the main thing-one thing you've got to have. Few pitchers have it. In batting, it is timing-waiting on the ball, not hurrying the swing-just as it is in golf. Most hitters in baseball swing too quickly. They can't wait on the pitch. Old Joe Jackson could wait. So could Speaker and Cobb.
Babe Ruth
Make no mistake about that. The old boy was the greatest player I ever saw or hope to see. When I was pitching I had fair success against all the other great hitters, but Cobb was one guy I never could get out. I had a reputation for being a slugger and I guess I could hit 'em pretty far at that, but that guy Cobb could do everything--better than any player I ever saw. Old Georgia Peach was a great hitter, a spectacular fielder, a wonderfui thrower and oh boy, how he could run.
Babe Ruth
Nothing to it. Those Yankees were the best team. Figure it out. After we got going we won twelve straight World Series games-twelve in a row. It was murder. The Red Sox had the greatest outfield with Lewis, Speaker and Hooper. But the Yankees had the greatest punch baseball ever knew. We never even worried five or six runs behind. Ruth-Gehrig-Lazerri-Combs-Dickey-wham, wham, and wham-no matter who was pitching.
Babe Ruth
I don't say that the Milwaukee Brewers are nothing, but I think the offense of the Cincinnati Reds (is) better. There's no making mistakes when pitching against Cincinnati. When you make a mistake against them, you pay for it. When you make a mistake against Milwaukee, sometimes they miss it and that's good.
Carlos Zambrano
I don't feel like I want to get in front of a camera any more. I like getting, you know, just being a slob behind a camera and watching other people look good. You know, I might not hurry back. I might go and go somewhere no-one can find me. You know where that is? You know where the place is no-one can find you? I was thinking of pitching my tent right next to the weapons of mass destruction. Then no-one would find me.
Mel Gibson