Quotes
Quotes by Don Drysdale
“A torn rotator cuff is a cancer for a pitcher and if a pitcher gets a badly torn one, he has to face the facts, it’s all over baby.”
“If they knocked two of your guys down, I’d get four. You have to protect your hitters.”
“In Brooklyn, it was as though you were in your own little bubble. You were all part of one big, but very close family, and the Dodgers were the main topic of everybody’s conversations and you could sense the affection people had for you. I don’t know that such a thing exists anymore.”
“I hate all hitters. I start a game mad and I stay that way until it’s over.”
“It’s a bottom line business where a lot of gray suits are brought in and then, within two years, these guys suddenly know everything about baseball.”
“My own little rule was two for one. If one of my teammates got knocked down, then I knocked down two on the other team.”
“Some of these guys wear beards to make them look intimidating, but they don’t look so tough when they have to deliver the ball. Their abilities and their attitudes don’t back up their beards.”
“The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid, and if he is timid, he has to remind the hitter he’s timid.”
“When I throw a curve that hangs and it goes for a hit, I want to chew up my glove.”
“When we played, World Series checks meant something. Now all they do is screw your taxes.”
“I always used to think that he [Hank Aaron] had a lot of Stan Musial in his stance. From the pitcher’s mound they both seem to coil at you. The only sensible thing – if you couldn’t get the manager to let you skip a turn against him – was to mix the pitches and keep the ball low, and if you were pitching to spots it was important to miss bad. If you missed good, and the ball got in his power zone, sometimes you were glad it went out of the park and was not banged up the middle.”
“What being around [Sal] Maglie did for me was to confirm this idea in my mind and refine it. It was part of the game. I watched Maglie, I listened to Maglie, and it all sunk in. It just sort of clicked.”
Quotes about Don Drysdale
“Batting against Don Drysdale is the same as making a date with a dentist.”
— Dick Groat
“Don Drysdale would consider an intentional walk a waste of three pitches. If he wants to put you on base, he can hit you with one pitch.”
— Mike Shannon
“I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he’d come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, ‘Do you want me to sign it?’” M
— ickey Mantle
“I personally think it’s too bad if a batter gets hit crowding the plate. I know that Don Drysdale, Larry Sherry and Stan Williams felt the same way when they pitched for the Dodgers in the late 1950s and early ’60s. That was the formula I was raised on. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a batter apologize for smashing a line drive off some part of a pitcher’s torso”
— Roger Craig, Inside Pitch
“The trick against Drysdale is to hit him before he hits you.”
— Orlando Cepeda
“Home plate is 17 inches wide. But to Don Drysdale it is divided into three parts – the inside four inches, the middle nine inches, and the outside four inches. To him only the middle part belongs to the hitter; the inside and outside parts belong to the pitcher.”
— Dave Anderson, New York Times