Top 35 Ted Williams Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Just keep going. Everybody gets better if they keep at it.”

— Ted Williams

2. “I’ve found in life the more you practice, the better you get. If you want something enough and work hard to get it, your chances of success are greater.”

— Ted Williams

3. “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.”

— Ted Williams

4. “The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely.”

— Ted Williams

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5. “The key to hitting is just plain working at it. Work, that’s the real secret.”

— Ted Williams

6. “All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street, folks will say, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.””

— Ted Williams

7. “No one has come up with a substitute for hard work.”

— Ted Williams

8. “You’ve got to be ready for the fastball.”

— Ted Williams

9. “God gets you to the plate, but once you’re there you’re on your own.”

— Ted Williams

10. “There’s only one way to become a hitter. Go up to the plate and get mad. Get mad at yourself and mad at the pitcher.”

— Ted Williams

11. “People always told me that my natural ability and good eyesight were the reasons for my success as a hitter. They never talk about the practice, practice, practice.”

— Ted Williams

12. “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.”

— Ted Williams

13. “Hitting is fifty percent above the shoulders.”

— Ted Williams

14. “A man has to have goals – for a day, for a lifetime – and that was mine, to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’”

— Ted Williams

15. “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”

— Ted Williams

16. “By the time you know what to do, you’re too old to do it.”

— Ted Williams

17. “Think. Don’t just swing. Think about the pitcher, what he threw you last time up, his best pitch, who’s up next. Think.”

— Ted Williams

18. “I don’t want to take anything away from Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. They’re both great hitters, but they’re batting against guys they never would have seen in previous years.”

— Ted Williams

19. “If you get fooled by a pitch with less than two strikes, take it.”

— Ted Williams

20. “I object to fishing tournaments less for what they do to fish than what they do to fishermen.”

— Ted Williams

21. “Joe DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career can not be summed up in numbers and awards. It might sound corny, but he had a profound and lasting impact on the country.”

— Ted Williams

22. “All managers are losers, they are the most expendable pieces of furniture on the face of the Earth.”

— Ted Williams

23. “If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.”

— Ted Williams

24. “There has always been a saying in baseball that you can’t make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game.”

— Ted Williams

25. “You have to hit the fastball to play in the big leagues.”

— Ted Williams

26. “They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays.”

— Ted Williams

27. “I’ve found that you don’t need to wear a necktie if you can hit.”

— Ted Williams

28. “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

— Ted Williams

29. “Hitting is the most important part of the game. It is where the big money is, where much of the status is, and the fan interest.”

— Ted Williams

30. “If I could run like Mantle I’d hit .400 every year!”

— Ted Williams

31. “I hope somebody hits .400 soon. Then people can start pestering that guy with questions about the last guy to hit .400.”

— Ted Williams

32. “Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game.”

— Ted Williams

33. “If there was ever a man born to be a hitter it was me.”

— Ted Williams

34. “A man has to have goals – for a day, for a lifetime...”

— Ted Williams

35. “The Cleveland Cavaliers just offered me a full-time job and a house! A house! A house!”

— Ted Williams

36. “Baseball is 50% from the neck up.”

— Ted Williams