I've got to be first. ALL the time.

When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch.

Walter Johnson's fastball looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed.

Speed is a great asset; but it's greater when it's combined with quickness - and there's a big difference.

The longer I live, the longer I realize that batting is more a mental matter than it is physical. The ability to grasp the bat, swing at the proper time, take a proper stance; all these are elemental. Batting is rather a study in psychology, a sizing up of a pitcher and catcher and observing little details that are of immense importance. It's like the study of crime, the work of a detective as he picks up clues.

I may have been fierce, but never low or underhand.

Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.