ONE of the greatest pitchers of all time (he did pitch very briefly in NY at the very end of his 24-year career:
“I’m probably the only guy who worked for (Casey) Stengel before and after he was a genius.”
and
“Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”
and, after pitching a ball to a forlorn and insecure rookie, who could not seem to hit major league pitching and was already asking his manager to send him back to the minors, here comes a pitch from this fellow, that the rookie whallops out of the park:
“He was something like zero for twenty-one the first time I saw him. His first major league hit was a home run off me and I’ll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie (Mays) forever if I’d only struck him out.”
about that pitch he said, “For the first 60 feet, it was a heck of a pitch.” (note to some readers who are not baseball cognoscenti: the distance between the pitchers mound and home plate is 60 feet, 6 inches)