Ted Williams Quotations

Theodore Samuel Williams (30 August 1918 - 5 July 2002) was a Major League Baseball player; he spent 19 seasons with the Boston Red Sox.

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A kid copies what is good. I remember the first time I saw Lefty O'Doul, and he was as far away as those palms. And I saw the guy come to bat in batting practice. I was looking through a knothole, and I said, 'Geez, does that guy look good!' And it was Lefty O'Doul, one of the greatest hitters ever.
- The Sporting News (1994)

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."
- Variant: All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, "There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived."

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

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.

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

Baseball's future? Bigger and bigger, better and better! No question about it, it's the greatest game there is!

DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career cannot be summed up in numbers and awards. It might sound corny, but he had a profound and lasting impact on the country.

Hitting a baseball— I've said it a thousand times— is the single most difficult thing to do in sport.

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.

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

I know how lucky I've been in life, more than anybody will ever know. I've lived a kind of precarious life style, precarious in sports, flying and baseball. And oh boy. I know how lucky I've been.

I know— I know all about you. Look, kid, don't ever— ya' understand me?— don't ever let anyone monkey with your swing.
- To Carl Yastrzemski

If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.

If there is such a thing as a science in sport, hitting a baseball is it. As with any science, there are fundamentals, certain tenets of hitting every good batter or batting coach could tell you. But it is not an exact science.

If you don't think too good, don't think too much.
- As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations, Page 360.

In spite of all the terrible things that have been said about me by the knights of the keyboard up there... And they were terrible things, I'd like to forget them, but I can't. I want to say that my years in Boston have been the greatest thing in my life.

Making good contact with a round ball and round bat even if you know what's coming is hard to do. That seems to be the one major thing that all young players have difficulty with. Why? It's the hardest thing to do in sports. So that's the reason baseball is a hard game to play.

People always told me that my natural ability and good eyesight were the reasons for my success as a hitter. They never talk about the practice, practice, practice.

The two things I'm proudest of in my life, is that I became a Marine pilot and that I became a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame.

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.

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.

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

You can't imagine the warm feeling I had, for the very fact that I had done what every ballplayer would want to do on his last time up, having wanted to do it so badly, and knowing how the fans really felt, how happy they were for me. Maybe I should have let them know I knew, but I couldn't. It just wouldn't have been me.

For my money, Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of all-time. I'd take him over Ruth, I'd take him over Cobb. I'd take him over Cobb because of the combination of power and average. I'd take him over Ruth because with Ruth, you can only speculate about what he would have done in the modern era. Ted Williams hit .388 at the age of 39 in 1957. He was what few of us ever become; he was exactly what he set out to be. He said he wanted to be able to walk down the street some day and have people say "There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived". And if they don't say that, it's only because they don't know what they're talking about.
- Bob Costas in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary Baseball http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y3tQU0AfS4

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