Ernie Banks Quotes

Any time you can go out there and throw 12 pitches in any inning, you give your team some momentum coming in and get some confidence out on the mound.

Sometimes offense wins. Sometimes pitching wins.

We have to have great pitching performances from our guys, and we have to take it from there.

I'm probably the only relief pitcher who has more saves than strikeouts.

You feel like a stud out there when people swing and miss. As I've gotten older, I've preached to our young guys that strikeouts are sexy, but outs are outs, man, no matter how you get them. It's a lot cooler for me pitching in the seventh or eighth inning than it is going 5 1/3. Your manager likes it a lot more, too.

We need three kinds of pitching: left handed, right handed, and relief.

They can't have Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling lose a game.

The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.

Pitching keeps you in the games. Home runs win the game.

Six innings, you're doing your job. That's a good target to have, but I'm always looking to improve. There's three more innings of improvement left.

You can't get too caught up in trying to pitch a complete game, because that's hard to do.

My career spanned the era when relievers started to become more important.

No, I think the pitching today has more depth.

Baseball is all about pitching, and we know we have to improve our pitching.

Twenty games is the magic figure for pitchers - .300 is the magic figures for batters. It pays off in salary and reputation. And those are the two things that keep a ballplayer in business.

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

The outfield is solid, so is the catching and the infield.

I'm pretty much the one that goes to the mound.

It's not good or bad, but closers have changed things. I don't think you are going to win a World Series without one. Where would the Yankees be without Mariano Rivera?

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.

It feels good to be able to contribute, eat innings, provide some rest for the bullpen.

I'm a Red Sox fan, but I still have a lot of respect for Mariano Rivera, who's the best closer of all-time.

You can't have your bullpen throwing three or four innings every night. Just not fair to them.

Half the time, I have trouble following our own pitcher's sequence.

If you asked a baseball pitcher from the '50s what a middle reliever was, he'd laugh at you. In the '50s, everyone pitched complete games.