THOUGHTS FOR SUCCESS
"Any
minute, any day, some players may break a long standing record. That's
one of the fascinations about the game, the unexpected surprises." Source: My 66 Years in the Big Leagues (Connie Mack) "He'd
(Charlie Gehringer) say hello at the start of Spring Training and
goodbye at the end of the season and the rest of the time he let his
bat and glove do all the talking for him." -Ty Cobb
"I
could probably throw harder if I wanted, but why? When they're in a
jam, a lot of pitchers...try to throw harder. Me, I try to locate
better." -Greg Maddox
"I try to do two
things: locate my fastball and change speeds. That's it. I try to keep
as simple as possible. I just throw my fastball (to) both sides of the
plate and change speed every now and then. There is no special food or
anything like that, I just try to make quality pitches and try to be
prepared each time I go out there." -Greg Maddox
"When
people say (nice) things you take them as compliments and it's nice,
but it won't help you win your next game. The thing I am trying to keep
in mind is that relying on my past performance will not make me win my
next game, it'll only get in my way." -Greg Maddox
"You're
not going to win by automatically going out there. It's hard to know
what people really expect of you, and I've never tried to live up to
expectations anyway. That's no way to play baseball." -Greg Maddox
"One
of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while
you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to,
reach down and prove something." -Greg Maddox "Every
hitter likes fastballs just like everybody likes ice cream. But you
don't like it when someone's stuffing it into you by the gallon. That's
how you feel when Nolan Ryan's throwing balls by you." -Reggie Jackson "A guy that throws what he intends to throw, that's the definition of a good pitcher." Source: Los Angeles Times (March 31, 1971) "I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it." Source: A Thinking Man's Guide to Basbeall (Leonard Koppett) "The
way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the
greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play
together, the club won't be worth a dime." -Babe Ruth "When
I was up there at the plate, my purpose was to get on base anyway I
could, whether by hitting or by getting hit." -Shoeless Joe Jackson "I
copied (Shoeless Joe) Jackson's style because I thought he was the
greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever
saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter." -Hall of Famer Babe Ruth "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.'" Source: My Turn at Bat (Ted Williams) "Baseball
gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as
someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of
man and the name of the game." Source: Sports Illustrated (August 8, 1966) "Hitting is fifty percent above the shoulders." "Did they tell me how to pitch to (Ted) Williams?
Sure they did. It was great advice, very encouraging. They said he had
no weakness, won't swing at a bad ball, has the best eyes in the
business, and can kill you with one swing. He won't hit anything bad,
but don't give him anything good." - Bobby Shantz "There ain't much to being a ballplayer, if you're a ballplayer." Source: The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (1997) -Honus Wagner
