AB de Villiers Quotes

You know, it's a different deal - throwing a football as opposed to throwing a baseball.

If you can't see the rotation and tell if it's a sink - a fastball, then you have to be able to tell whether that fastball is a two-seamer or a four-seamer. You have to be able to recognize if it's a slider or a curveball. You have to be able to recognize if it's a changeup or a split-finger.

Within the changing room, everyone has always known I'm best when I pitch the ball up and get a little bit of movement.

I'm a breaking-ball pitcher.

When you're spinning a two-seam, getting on the side of the ball to get more run or sink can be good, but it can really be detrimental to your four-seam.

My fingers are too short to enable me to get grip enough on the ball to pitch a deep curve, so that I have been compelled to depend more on drops, straight balls and the different artifices known to pitchers to deceive the batter.

Hideki Irabu had a very good curveball. Just a straight up and down, swing-and-miss curveball.

I had some great pitchers while in St. Louis. At first, they only 'pitched' the ball fifty feet. They had an allowance of six bases on balls, which was neutralized to some extent by four strikes. Later on, the 'throw' became a free-for-all, overhand, or any style the pitcher chose.

I use fast curves, pitched overhand and sidearm, fastballs, high and inside, and an underhand fade away pitch with the hand almost down to the level of the knees.

I was short with my fastball and breaking ball.

There's no easier pitch to hit than a splitter that doesn't do anything.

I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider. Then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it has crossed the plate.

Pitching is both an art and a science.

My throwing motion is what it is.

I never actually thought about my delivery. I was always just throwing the ball.

I threw all my pitches over the top which was important for me because my slider was hard to tell from my fastball at release.

Never reach for the knuckleball; I just let it come to me.

The final release point for the fastball is the tips of your fingers.

The three most important pitches I threw in my life were all fastballs.

Anybody's best pitch is the one the batters ain't hitting that day.

My pitching philosophy is simple - keep the ball way from the bat.

I have to go with the approach I had in Triple-A. I need to take a lot of those fastballs I am seeing to left field. Also must gear up for the changeup and take them up the middle.

We had to adjust and threw a few more rise balls and curves but it worked.

There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

Quickness and momentum. You take the whole last generation of sports, listening to them, even reading about them, watching the games, analyzing them, arguing about them, instant-replaying them, second-guessing them, and all you'll distill from them is quickness and momentum.