The good rising fastball is the best pitch in baseball.
Most pitchers fear losing their fastball, but since I don't have one, I have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I was short with my fastball and breaking ball.
Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.
The final release point for the fastball is the tips of your fingers.
At 19, I was still figuring out how to throw a fastball.
The three most important pitches I threw in my life were all fastballs.
No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
You have to hit the fastball to play in the big leagues.
I lost the good stuff on my fastball. I had to come up with something to keep me in the league. The knuckler rescued me then.
I thought I had to show all my stuff and I almost tore the boards of the grandstand with my fastball.
I looked for the same pitch my whole career, a breaking ball. All of the time. I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me, none of them.
Pitching is what you have best on the day you work, and if you can't get your fastball over the plate, then maybe you can win with your curve.
I studied one term of law and then came to realize I had a little better fastball and curve than I did a vocabulary.
I use fast curves, pitched overhand and sidearm, fastballs, high and inside, and an underhand fade away pitch with the hand almost down to the level of the knees.
Later, I could take something off my slider and I could make my fastball sink, so I really had four pitches.
I never knew how to throw a fastball, never learned how to throw a curveball, a slider, split-finger, whatever they're throwing nowadays. I was a one-pitch pitcher.
The reason I think I'm a good pitcher is I locate my fastball and I change speeds. Period. That's what you do to pitch. That's what pitchers have to do to win games.
I've got a fastball, change-up, forkball, curve, slider, knuckle-slider, knuckle-curve, I had about seven pitches I could have used at any time.
John Wetteland had a very good curveball. He threw it for a strike, too, in any count, any situation. But, he really didn't use it much. He didn't want to throw it. He wanted to throw fastball-slider.
I'm not executing my pitches. I'm not commanding my fastball, and I get behind in the count. When I try to throw strikes, I'm getting hurt. That's not the way I pitch.
