Best Ted Williams Quotes & Sayings

Ted Williams, an extraordinary hitter in his day, has said the swing starts in the hips, and Sosa arrived with one of the strongest lower bodies in the game. — Bill Dedman

Ted Williams is one of the best hitters ever to play the game, and I didn't get a chance to see him play, so all I could do was read books and look at pictures. — Tony Gwynn

I object to fishing tournaments less for what they do to fish than what they do to fishermen. — Ted Williams

No one has come up with a substitute for hard work. — Ted Williams

I hope somebody hits .400 soon. Then people can start pestering that guy with questions about the last guy to hit .400. — Ted Williams

It was always fun for me, I loved baseball so darn much. By the hours I practiced, you'd have to say I was working a lot of hours, but it was pretty near tireless fun for me. I'd rather swing a bat than do anything else in the world. — Ted Williams

We try to exert a Ted Williams kind of discipline. In his book The Science of Hitting, Ted explains that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells, each the size of a baseball. Swinging only at balls in his "best" cell, he knew, would allow him to bat .400; reaching for balls in his "worst" spot, the low outside corner of the strike zone, would reduce him to .230. In other words, waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors. — Warren Buffett

There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game. — Ted Williams

By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it. — Ted Williams

That moment, when you first lay eyes on that field - The Monster, the triangle, the scoreboard, the light tower Big Mac bashed, the left-field grass where Ted (Williams) once roamed - it all defines to me why baseball is such a magical game — Jayson Stark

Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but DiMaggio was the greatest all around player. — Bob Feller

I've read dozens of interviews and accounts that basically come down to How Poets Do It and the truth is they're all do-lally and they're all different. There's Gerard Manly Hopkins in his black Jesuit clothes lying face down on the ground to look at an individual bluebell, Robert Frost who never used a desk, was once caught short by a poem coming and wrote it on the sole of his shoe, T.S. Eliot in his I'm-not-a-Poet suit with his solid sensible available-for-poetry three hours a day, Ted Hughes folded into his tiny cubicle at the top of the stairs where there is no window, no sight or smell of earth or animal but the rain clatter on the roof bows him to the page, Pablo Neruda who grandly declared poetry should only ever be handwritten, and then added his own little bit of bonkers by saying: in green ink. Poets are their own nation. Most of them know. — Niall Williams

When you're a kid, what fun the game is! You grab a bat and glove and ball, that's it. I know what Ted Williams and Stan Musial meant when they said it got tougher to get in shape every year. — Eddie Mathews

All the bullets and all the bombs that explode all over the world won't leave the impact, when all is said and done, of a dollar bill dropped in the Jimmy Fund pot by a warm heart and a willing hand. You should be proud and happy to know that your contribution will someday help some kid to a better life. — Ted Williams

When we lose Fenway, we lose the sense that somebody sat here and watched Ted Williams hit. — Bob Costas

Ted Williams hit 17 career grand slams. He is the toughest batter to get out in major league history. It was never fun for opposing pitchers to have to face him, but that was never more true than it was when there was nowhere to put him - and his grand slam total is only one of the many franchise records that he owns. — Tucker Elliot

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer. — Ted Williams

Think. Don't just swing. Think about the pitcher, what he threw you last time up, his best pitch, who's up next. Think. — Ted Williams

The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball — Martin F. Nolan

When I was a kid, man, my dad used to buy me the Ted Williams glove at Sears with the Ted Williams shoes with the eight stripes on 'em. I used to play Little League, and I was Ted Williams-ed out. — Tony Gwynn

Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning, — Bob Feller

To be good you've gotta have a lot of little boy in you. When you see Willie Mays and Ted Williams jumping and hopping around the bases after hitting a home run, and the kissing and hugging that goes on at home plate, you realize they have to be little boys. — Roy Campanella

The best hitter I ever saw was Ted Williams. — Mickey Mantle

Having been aware of the Red Sox since the 1946 World Series, having been growled at by Ted Williams as a young reporter in 1960, having been present at the horror of 1986 and the comeback of 2004, I have seen the highs and lows of some other people's favorite team. — George Vecsey

Baseball is 50% from the neck up — Ted Williams

The key to hitting is just plain working at it. Work, that's the real secret. — Ted Williams

All managers are losers, they are the most expendable pieces of furniture on the face of the Earth. — 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. — Ted Williams

One guy that I wish was here right now, Ted Williams, helped me so much, our long talks, not about hitting but about fishing, one of Ted's passions, and I wish he was here today to share this with me because I owe so much to Ted Williams. — Wade Boggs

There's only one way to become a hitter. Go up to the plate and get mad. Get mad at yourself and mad at the pitcher. — Ted Williams

Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941, the same season Ted Williams batted .406 - but did you know that also in 1941, Jeff Heath, an outfielder who spent a decade playing for the Indians, became the first player in AL history to hit 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs in the same season? It's true. — Tucker Elliot

If I could run like Mantle I'd hit .400 every year! — Ted Williams

They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays. — Ted Williams

If you don't think too good, don't think too much. — Ted Williams

An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press. — George Will

You've got to be ready for the fastball. — Ted Williams

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. — Ted Willams

Hitting is the most important part of the game. It is where the big money is, where much of the status is, and the fan interest. — Ted Williams