17 Quotes by Hal McRae

You're trying to be ready for everything, and you're not ready for anything. We'd like for them to be ready for the one pitch, the fastball. That's where you start. We go from there. ... All timing comes off the fastball. You've got to be a fastball hitter first.

It was taboo to strike out a lot. Now there's so much emphasis on the home run, guys can make good money even if they swing and miss a lot.

It's tough. The key for me is him keeping his head back. I saw that as the cause of his inconsistency. ... Hopefully he'll get into form before the year's out.

It's fun to win and you play to win. Amazingly, when I went to spring training, the thought was to win it all. The thought has always been to win it all. So far, we've continued to win. We've won all year. But there was no thought of playing .500 or being competitive. The only thought was winning it all. It's fun.

On-base percentage is No. 1. If you strike out a hundred times, but you also walk a hundred times, you're a pretty good hitter -- like Bobby Abreu. Yeah, he'll strike out. But his on-base percentage is always over .400, which is what you want.

In a nutshell, offensively we're struggling. The nuts and bolts of what's going on - that's it. We're struggling.

If somebody else tried to do what Jimmy does, they'd leave here in a straightjacket. He's different. What works for him probably wouldn't work for somebody else. He's so gifted, and that's probably made what he's going through worse.

He's not in screaming distance of what he was. It's just a matter of him committing to doing it. It's not difficult to (fix). It's nothing new. It's just something he's gotten away from.