Hank Aaron Quotes

I like those lefties, but when you're hitting, all pitchers look alike. I don't care too much who's throwing or what he throws. When my timing is off, I have trouble; when it ain't, I don't.

Terrible. It took me 17 years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.

Didn't come up here to read. Came up here to hit.

I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious. When I get out on the field, nothing's a joke to me. I don't feel like I should walk around with a smile on my face.

[W]hen I was a little boy, my daddy said to me, "Henry, never hurry unless you have to." I've remembered that all my life and here I am in the major leagues.

Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution. The mental aspects of hitting were especially important to me. I was strictly a guess hitter, which meant I had to have a thorough knowledge of every pitcher I came up against and develop a strategy for hitting him. My method was to identify the pitches a certain pitcher had and eliminate all but one or two and then wait for them. One advantage I had was quick wrists. Another advantage — and one that all good hitters have — was my eyesight. Sometimes I could read the pitcher's grip on the ball before he ever released it and be able to tell what pitch he was throwing. I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me, none of them.

When he was healthy, there was nobody better than Campanella as both a catcher and a hitter. But I played with Del Crandall a long time and he was a match for anybody defensively.

He was my favorite hitter. He could do almost anything he wanted to do at bat. He was a scientific hitter. I've seen him deliberately go for the home run late in a game and get it. Even if it meant pulling an outside pitch, he'd pull because he'd made up his mind to do it. Another thing I liked about him was the power he generated when he hit the ball between the infielders. This is a sure sign of a great hitter.

The way I see it, it's a great thing to be the man who hit the most home runs, but it's a greater thing to be the man who did the most with the home runs he hit. So as long as there's a chance that maybe I can hammer out a little justice now and then, or a little opportunity here and there, I intend to do as I always have — keep swinging.

There wasn't any pitcher I felt I couldn't get a hit off.

I'm not trying to make anyone forget the Babe; but only to remember Hank Aaron.