In the split second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher's hand until it reaches the plate you have to think about your stride, your hip action, your wrist action, determine how much, if any the ball is going to break and then decide whether to swing at it.
Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you're swinging.
The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes, but it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news and hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home.
Man, if I made one million dollars I would come in at six in the morning, sweep the stands, wash the uniforms, clean out the office, manage the team and play the games.
He (Jackie Robinson) was the greatest competitor I've ever seen. I've seen him beat a team with his bat, his ball, his glove, his feet and, in a game in Chicago one time, with his mouth.
You don't have to win to be a winner. If you give 100 percent, getting yourself mentally and physically prepared to play the game, if you look in the mirror and can say you give it everything to win, that's it. You're not going to win every time.
Today's baseball players are walking conglomerates. They have fantastic salaries, multiple investments, but we had one thing they don't have today, the train ride. We didn't always like it, but those rides kept us close as a team and as friends. Something you can't get on a two hour plane ride that used to take you fifteen hours on a train.
What a player does best, he should practice least. Practice is for problems.
He (Jackie Robinson) knew he had to do well. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have.
You know you're pitching well when the batters look as bad as you do at the plate.
Not even the Emerald Isle itself was as green as the grass that grew in Ebbets Field.
My high salary for one season was forty-six thousand dollars and a Cadillac. If I were to get paid a million, I'd feel that I should sweep out the stadium every night after I finished playing the game.
My high salary for one season was forty-six thousand dollars and a Cadillac.
The field was even greener than my boy's mind had pictured it. In later years, friends of ours visited Ireland and said the grass there was plenty green all right, but that not even the Emerald Isle itself was as green as the grass that grew in Ebbets Field.
We wept, Brooklyn was a lovely place to hit. If you got a ball in the air, you had a chance to get it out. When they tore down Ebbets Field, they tore down a little piece of me.
