A Quote by Barry Bonds

I think of myself as 'catching' the ball with my bat and letting the pitcher supply the power. — © Barry Bonds
I think of myself as 'catching' the ball with my bat and letting the pitcher supply the power.
If a pitcher goes up there and he's throwing a ball and it's a breaking ball down and away or a fastball up and in, a perfect pitcher's pitch, and you're able to just foul it off and stay alive in the at-bat, just keep grinding, keep working through the at-bat and hoping for that mistake that he's going to make. And if he doesn't, then you walk.
When the ball is over the middle of the plate, the batter is hitting it with the sweet part of the bat. When it's inside, he's hitting it with the part of the bat from the handle to the trademark. When it's outside, he's hitting it with the end of the bat. You've got to keep the ball away from the sweet part of the bat. To do that, the pitcher has to move the hitter off the plate.
The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat. So the percentage in weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.
I'm always amazed when a pitcher becomes angry at a hitter for hitting a home run off him. When I strike out, I don't get angry at the pitcher, I get angry at myself. I would think that if a pitcher threw up a home run ball, he should be angry at himself.
I am an arm hitter. When you snap the bat with your wrists just as you meet the ball, you give the bat tremendous speed for a few inches of its course. The speed with which the bat meets the ball is the thing that counts.
You can't see the bat hit the ball if you're generating any bat speed. If you're just laying the bat through the strike zone, sure, maybe.
When scouts evaluate players for power, they are not simply watching to see if the ball clears the wall. They're laser focused on the flight of the ball, its trajectory and the speed with which it leaves the bat.
Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
No one can ever see the ball hit the bat because it's physically impossible to focus your eyes that way. However, when I hit the ball especially hard, I could smell the leather start to burn as it struck the wooden bat.
In tennis ball cricket, even it's hit from the toe of the bat, the ball still travels a lot, but in normal cricket, it has to be the middle part of the bat, so it requires a lot of work.
The two biggest things to understand when you're tracking the ball as a defensive back is your position on the field and understanding that once the ball is in the air you become the receiver. Too many young defensive backs worry about the receiver catching it or what the receiver is doing instead of focusing on what they should be doing. Just go out and make the play yourself, don't worry about him. Know where the ball is and attack it. Put yourself in position to bat it or catch it and make the play.
When I look at someone like Andrew Symonds, I see a player who has done phenomenally well with the bat, as his record shows. He certainly has the ability to be a very good all-rounder, but I think to be a great one, you need to be able to turn a game with the bat or the ball.
When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my convenience. The pitcher was there to throw me a ball to hit. The catcher was there to throw it back to him if he didn't give me what I wanted the first time. And the umpire was lucky that he was close enough to watch.
Really, you don't want to think about yards after the catch when the ball is in the air. You want to think about catching the ball. And then let the rest play its way out.
When I'm at the plate, I'm not thinking about what I'm trying to do with the bat - I'm thinking about what the pitcher is trying to do with the ball.
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