Chili Davis Quotes

The first time I picked up a bat in a professional game, I hit a ball hard left-handed, and my first home run was so effortless, it surprised me.

Professionalism is not sportsmanship. If you don’t succeed, you won’t be in your profession for long. In our society, it’s not about good or bad. It’s about who’s on top.

I’ve been on teams that lost a hundred games in a season. I’ve been on teams that had a shot to make the playoffs and fizzled out at the end.

I’m at the point in my career where to be a winner is more important than any individual things.

You know, the other day I gave all of my old Angels gear to Goodwill…and Goodwill gave it back.

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.

When you go to other parks, they hang banners for the wild-card or Eastern Division or Western Division champions. Around here, they don’t hang anything unless its for being world champions.

For me, I tend to sit back sometimes and just count my blessings because of how long I’ve played.

You don’t get old being stupid.

It all comes down to when spring training comes. Do you want to go or don’t you? If you want to go, you go.

I’ve always favored kids as a player. If I walked out of the locker room and there were 100 people there and 50 of them were kids, I’d sign the 50 kids before anything else.

I used to lead off when I was a rookie. I’ve always been able to bunt.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

If I stayed in this game for individual achievements, I don’t think I’d still be playing.

I think hitting is more a mentality than a philosophy. A philosophy is somebody telling you the way they think it should be. Well, different people believe in different things. My thing is this: Be ready to hit.

I have always loved the Bay Area. I spent a lot of time in the Bay Area. I started my career there. That’s a huge part of the excitement for me.

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.

My sister is a good story of resiliency. She had a full ride at UC Davis, but she left school to go to the Philippines – and then she decided to go back to school in her 40s, which surprised me. She went to UC Berkeley, and I think she was one of two African Americans in her class at Haas. She’s really impressive.

You fool around with different pitches playing catch, but it’s not the same when you’ve got to face some guy with a bat in his hand.

There are certain things I can’t do, certain pitches I can’t hit. You stay away from them. You try to wait for pitches you can hit. The bat speed isn’t what it used to be. You make up for it by using your head, working counts, getting ahead in counts and getting pitches to hit and hitting them hard.

I don’t think much about whether fans will remember me.

Individual statistics, plate time and everything tend to come, but the most enjoyment I get out of baseball is actually winning.