Billy Butler Quotes

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

The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.

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.

For me, it's just going up on the mound and trying to get outs.

Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.

No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.

It's not fun facing a ball going 97 mph, trust me.

As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher's mound. It was as if I'd been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.

You could ask any position player and they'll tell you: pitchers aren't athletes.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

I couldn't throw a knuckleball if my life depended on it.

I never resorted to the spitter until I was obliged to. I nearly ruined my arm throwing curves.

When you can throw 97 miles an hour and put the ball over the plate anytime you want, it's fun.

When a pitcher's throwing a spitball, don't worry and don't complain, just hit the dry side like I do.

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

Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen mister, no man alive can throw any harder than Smokey Joe Wood.

Show me a guy who can't pitch inside and I'll show you a loser.

Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I'm not giving up my day job or trying to get anyone else's job. I just can't think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer!

You fool around with different pitches playing catch, but it's not the same when you've got to face some guy with a bat in his hand.

Nolan Ryan is pitching much better now that he has his curve ball straightened out.

I never threw the spitter, well maybe once or twice when I really needed to get a guy out real bad.

The pitcher setting up the batter. It's chess, and you play with it.

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

Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.

I love to pitch so much.