Hitting is like swimming. Once you learn the stroke, you never forget it.

I never realized that batting a little ball around could cause so much commotion. I now know how (Charles) Lindbergh must have felt when he returned from St. Louis.

I learned to hit with a broomstick and a ball of tape and I could always get that bat on the ball.

I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider; then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first thirty feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it had crossed the plate.

I think I had the smallest handle around. When I got my bats, I even trimmed them down. I used to scrape them. Some years later when I started getting older, I used to start with a 33 and in the summer it got down to 31 and then probably in September got down to 30.

Used to be bats had thick handles and a big barrel. Then they found it's not the size of the bat that gets home runs - it's the speed with which you can swing it.

Get eight hours of sleep regularly. Keep your weight down, run a mile a day.