Hitter Quotes - page 3
Going to tell you something, Hank. Hand me that bat. Now I'm going to show you the whole secret of how I hit those home runs. Only fellow I ever told it to was Lou Gehrig, when poor Lou first came up to the Yanks and Miller Huggins was trying to make a left-field hitter out of him. Look. See how this grip makes your wrist break at the right moment? Throws the whole weight of the bat into the ball. With this grip, you've just got to follow through. I kept it a secret a long time.
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
[Branch] Rickey was a fanatic about speed, and I guess I am too. And you can see for yourself: the [teams that] are built on speed win. I like to get a stopwatch time on a kid in a sixty-yard dash, because in baseball you run sixty yards more than you do anything: first to third, second to home, center field to right-center. But I never time a hitter from home to first. What good does it do you? Clemente – I don't think he ever ran to first base under 4.4 or 4.5. That follow-through of his brought him up and toward third base, so it took him three tenths of a second just to get out of the batter's box, but he was still the fastest man on our club.
Roberto Clemente
I'd put him in the top five I've ever seen. Mays, Aaron, Clemente. That's pretty good company. He was a disciplined hitter, not just a wild swinger. He could hit a lot of pitches. I remember one time at Forbes Field, a pitcher dusted him with an inside fastball. Clemente got up and hit the next pitch over the wall. That's 440 feet at Forbes Field.
Roberto Clemente
There's only one way to classify Bob Clemente and that's as the strangest hitter in all baseball. Figure him out one way and he'll kill you another. You can be having your best day against everybody else and he'll treat you as though you had nothing. It's so hard to say what he's going to hit or what should be thrown to him. He's very strong and is extremely quick with his hands. You look at him swinging sometimes on his front foot, sometimes on his rear, sometimes with both feet off the ground, and you're inclined to think, ‘This guy can't hit the ball.' That's the biggest mistake you can make and I've made a few of them against him.
Roberto Clemente
Roberto Clemente was such an awesome hitter. I never knew how to pitch him. You could throw the ball a foot inside and he'd hit a line drive down the left field line. Throw it a foot outside and he'd hit a home run over the right field fence. Dick Selma was pitching in Forbes Field one time and it was a tight spot late in the game. Roberto was up with a chance to beat us, and Westrum came out to the mound. He knew that if you threw the ball inside or outside, Roberto could still hurt you. So he said, "Throw one right down the middle of the plate, letter high. He won't be looking for it there.” Sure enough, Roberto hit it 400 feet, but he hit to dead center field for an out.
Roberto Clemente