A Quote by Barry Lyga
Here’s the thing about baseball-it’s not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that. Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter’s box like a soldier and it’s up to him-and him alone-what happens next. But here’s the thing I didn’t understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run… Someone else has to pitch the ball.
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In baseball, when you get into the batter's box, that's it. It's just you. It's one man against the world. All that matters in that moment is your individual achievement and your individual skill. There is literally nothing that anyone else on your team can do for you. Hell, they're all sitting on the bench, waiting to see what happens, just like the fans in the crowd! It's just you and your bat. And the ball.
I played a lot of baseball growing up, and I always hit better if I kept moving before the pitch instead of standing still in the batter's box. I think a waggle does the same thing in the golf swing. It keeps you relaxed and gets your body ready to hit the ball.
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.
This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is b.s. Not only do you kick him—you kick him until he passes out—then beat him over the head with a baseball bat—then roll him up in an old rug—and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below!!!!!
The typical baseball play is a pitcher throwing a ball and the batter not swinging at it, while the other players watch. Even a home run, the sport's defining big blast, is only metaphorically exciting; a fly ball that leaves the yard changes the score but may offer no more compelling view than an outfielder staring up.
When you go up there in the batter's box, you're engaged to hit. It's the same thing with baserunning.
I remember facing him on opening day in 1987. It was Oakland at the Minnesota Twins, the first time I got him out on a breaking ball down-and-in and next at bat he hit the same pitch for a home run. I was telling my kids that story yesterday.
The thing I like about baseball is that it's one-on-one. You stand up there alone, and if you make a mistake, it's your mistake. If you hit a home run, it's your home run.
Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a home run every time at bat, who strikes out every opposing batter when he's pitching, who throws strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing outfield and who's always thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll do to baffle the other team. Any manager would want a guy like that playing for him. The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands and do those things.
In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit.
The toughest thing in hitting shouldn't be deciding when to swing. It is, for me, deciding when not to swing. You should be swinging from the time you get into the batter's box until something says don't swing.
The cool thing about being a writer is: you get to make stuff up. When I started wring about Vampires, I realized, I can take everything i did like about that mythology and anything I didn't like, I didn't have to; because until a real Vampire stands up and says, 'you've got it wrong,' it's anyone's game.
I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter; that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit!
The best books, they don’t talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you’d always thought about, but you didn’t think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you’re a little bit less alone in the world. You’re part of this cosmic community of people who’ve thought about this thing, whatever it happens to be.
I was hitting him with what I thought was my full strength, I hit him in the head about four times and every time I hit him, I was like, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry'. And he's like, 'It's fine, it didn't even hurt'. Yeah, that was kind of an ego deflater!
I'm from Arkansas, so I didn't even know who Howard Stern was until I was about 18 or 19. I only kind of knew what I had heard about him; then I saw him doing his thing. That's what I really liked about him.
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