Hank Aaron Quotes

Preparation is very important. The pitcher is going to do his job and prepare for you, so you as a hitter must do the same. I always watch videotape of pitchers before the game and even sometimes during.

Once I found my swing, I feel like if I put a good swing on it, I feel like it's got a good chance to go wherever - left, right, center - it doesn't matter. But I'm not just out here going to swing for home runs of anything. I'm just trying to put a good swing on the baseball.

I'm not thinking home run, I just want to put a good swing on the ball. When you go looking for home runs, you get off of your swing. So you don't think of homers when you go up to the plate.

You visualize [pitches]. You see it in your head; you think it...I used to play every pitcher in my mind before I went to the ballpark. I started getting ready for ever game the moment I woke up.

Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80% of being a successful hitter. The other 20% is just execution.

The pitcher has the ball, and nothing happens until he lets go of it. So as the batter, I felt I had to fight for any bit of control I could get. I expected the umpire, the catcher, and the pitcher to wait on me. I wanted to get ready on my time.

I think that's one of the things you start learning from being hot and playing every day at the beginning, you know. The league, they made their adjustments and their change to you, the way they pitch you, the way they attack you, and just learning and learning from that and making the adjustments the very next at bat or the very next pitch.

My mindset is always focused, which goes up on match days.

The only place you can win a football game is on the field, the only place you can lose it is in your hearts.

I don't think we can win every game. Just the next one.

It's about us getting ready to play. It's not about the other team. We'll beat ourselves before they beat us. That's always our approach.

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

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

I understand the psychology of the sport, especially inside the ring. From bell to bell, from when my entrance plays and I step through that curtain, people have to wonder what's going on inside that guy's head.

When I have a match to play, I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I'm practically in slow motion. By the time I'm ready to tee off, I'm so used to taking my time that it's impossible to hurry my swing.

To tell the truth, I never think about a homer. I'm just thinking of the situation and what I've got to do when I go to the plate.

What matters isn't how well you play when you're playing well. What matters is how well you play when you're playing badly.

Johnny Sain don't say much, but that don't matter much, because when you're out there on the mound, you got nobody to talk to.

I spent the nights before the Jets' two biggest games last year - for the AFL championship and the Super Bowl - with girls. But I don't consider that bad or foolish of me... The night before a game, I prepare myself both mentally and physically for the next day. I think a ballplayer has to be relaxed to play well; and if that involves being with a girl that night, he should do it.

I'm like a chameleon. I can kind of change and get my game going to whatever the situation is. If I play well, which I don't think I've even reached yet at all in this tournament, it's really hard for anyone on the women's tour to beat me.

If you play well on the field, everything will take care of itself.

Our sport is dangerous. We risk the life out there, so we need to stay calm and focused and leave all the rest out.

On Rafael Nadal: Every point he plays is like match point. That's why he's the champion right now.

To me, pre-match preparation is extremely important because that's something which is within my control.

I love the pole vault because it is a professor's sport. One must not only run and jump, but one must think. Which pole to use, which height to jump, which strategy to use. I love it because the results are immediate and the strongest is the winner. Everyone knows it. In everyday life that is difficult to prove.