The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.

If the Mets can win the World Series, the United States can get out of Vietnam.

The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.

In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.

There are only two places in the league - first place and no place.

Basically, hitters fall into a pattern, and once you know what they like, you can set them up for the putout with something else.

I had 12 years under my belt of baseball at the amateur level before I got to the big leagues.

I would like to be a great artist. I would quit pitching if I could paint like Monet or Rousseau. But I can't. What I can do is pitch, and I can do that very well.

I'm a huge advocate of pitching. You have to have good pitching as the solid core, the foundation. It keeps you in every game.

Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They'd be telling our soldiers: 'That's enough. You've fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!'

It takes 20 victories for people to recognize you as a great pitcher.

My job isn't to strike guys out; it's to get them out - sometimes by striking them out.

My pitch count as a general rule was 135. And I knew how many pitches I had when I went to the mound for the last three innings.

Once a year, I take my whole wine team down to see the Giants, and we meet the players. I've never seen anyone pitch like Lincecum that can throw the ball and get through the front leg. He has that stiff front leg.

Pitching is what you have best on the day you work, and if you can't get your fastball over the plate, then maybe you can win with your curve.

Take a look at all of them: Marichal, Jenkins, Spahn - what do you think made them successful? They conditioned their arms by pitching more, not less, starting from when they signed their first contract.

The thing most people don't understand is that pitching isn't the same every time out.

There is no set numerical value you can put on a pitcher. They're all different.

There's nothing wrong with pitch counts. But not when it's spit out by a computer, and the computer does not look at an individual's mechanics. And you can't look at his genes. It should come from the individual and the pitching coach and the manager.

What's important is to get into the pitcher's head: to know what he's made of.

Pitching is what you have best on the day you work, and if you cant get your fastball over the plate, then maybe you can win with your curve.

The student body was huge at UT and you had to mature pretty quick, very quick actually. I enjoyed it and it helped me a lot in my life in general - not only in the classroom but on the baseball field as well.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don't have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.

Whenever I wasn't watching the planes, I was playing community baseball, football, or something like that.

Baseball hasn't been the national pastime for many years now - no sport is. The national pastime, like it or not, is watching television.

Baseball is a team game.

I never ride just to ride. I ride to catch a fox. I play baseball to make the team.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history.

I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.

Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?

After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.

The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.

Baseball is like church. Many attend few understand.

I don't know what you guys say, but at home, life is way different from baseball.

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating.

Words can be like baseball bats when used maliciously.

I don't know anything about baseball.

I was born to hit a baseball. I can hit a baseball.

Richard Schiff is a really good baseball player. It's surprising because he looks exhausted.

It's very warm there, so we were outdoors all the time. The local people had programs for us year-round, where as kids we had the opportunity to play football, basketball, baseball, track and field - we just went from one sport to the next, year-round.

I'm proud to be here as a man that has played first base more than anybody in the game of baseball.

I always thought that there was going to be life after baseball, and so I designed that in my life I would have other interests after baseball that I would be able to step into. And I didn't realize the grip that baseball had on me and on my family.

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.