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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: NATIONALS VS CARDINALS

October 12, 2019

Daniel Hudson

St. Louis, Missouri - pregame 2

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Congratulations. Can you just take us through what the last couple days have been like, how the time line kind of developed and if you want to share the baby's name and everything.
DANIEL HUDSON: Yeah, baby's name is Millie. M-I-L-L-I-E. She's doing great, mom's doing great. Thank you, everybody, for nice words and gestures the last 24, 36 hours, it's been awesome.

Yeah, we, obviously her due date was originally the 14th. Once we kind of had an idea of a playoff schedule if we got past the Wild Card round who we were going to play, obviously Game 5 if we got to it in Los Angeles it was a little more convenient for me to get home. So we tried to schedule an induction for the 10th, which was yesterday. Just kind of made sense to go in between. If we were able to advance, obviously the 14th and my first two kids came a little bit later than their due date, so if you push it back a couple days you're looking at maybe Game 6, Game 7 of a championship series. I figure Game 1 is a little bit better miss than an elimination game.

So that's the way we tried to plan it. Obviously things changed. Thursday morning we were trying to see if we could get in early for the induction and the way it works, people that are doing natural birth come first, so we couldn't get a bed until yesterday afternoon, yesterday evening. So that's kind of the time line and that's how it went. It's just the way -- you try to plan something and everything goes crazy, so.

Q. What was your conversation like with Davey and your wife, just the decision you made. It's a big decision?
DANIEL HUDSON: Yeah, absolutely. My wife's, she's a rock star, she's been around obviously the game just as long as I have. She knows kind of what's going on. Obviously we didn't exactly plan to have a baby in the middle of the playoffs, but like you said, you plan something and stuff goes crazy.

So everybody within the Nationals organization was completely 100 percent on board with our plan, and really thank Mike and Davey for being understanding, and all the guys as well. I got lots of outpours of love and great messages I got yesterday. It was really, really nice to get those and really appreciate all the support.

Q. How much did you follow along with the game, if at all, and how grateful were you that Aníbal went out and did what he did?
DANIEL HUDSON: Yeah, it was awesome. It was really fun to watch. Obviously I got to watch from the postpartum room with mom and baby. So missed the beginning of the game, wasn't exactly, didn't know he had a no-hitter until midway through, so when they, one of the announcers said it. So it was really cool to see Aníbal go out like that and dominate, man, it was a lot of fun to watch.

Q. What was your itinerary like today and what kind of state are you in physically and mentally to pitch tonight?
DANIEL HUDSON: Mentally there. Physically, I'm a little tired. But not a lot of sleep the last few nights. I had a 7 a.m. flight out of Los Angeles on Thursday morning, had a 6 a.m. flight out of Phoenix this morning, got in at 11. So a little bit tired, but we'll get through it. Just go out there and try to get a win.

Q. You go through this couple days of something that's mostly private, and in the meantime there's this, what grows this national discussion about priorities and values and what you should be doing or whatever. Were you aware of this conversation?
DANIEL HUDSON: I'm not on social media anymore. I got rid of it a couple years ago. It's just something, a decision I made to try to focus myself one more positive stuff in my life. Obviously it's great tool. We were made aware of a lot of stuff that was going on, obviously, watching the game it was hard to ignore. I mean, I went, I was just telling somebody, I went from not having a job on March 21st to this huge national conversation on family values going into the playoffs, like, hey, life comes at you fast, man, like I don't know how that happened and how I became the face for whatever conversation was going on.

Everybody's got their opinions, man, and I really value my family and my family time. And like I said, the support I got from this organization, and most people, obviously, we were made aware of a lot of negative comments, but everybody's got their opinions and everybody's got their own priorities. And this organization was a hundred percent on board with what my priorities are and I'm really appreciative of that.

Q. Physically today how will you handle it preparing for a game and any different than normal?
DANIEL HUDSON: I'll try to make it as normal as possible. Obviously, having a baby two days ago and a lot on my mind with that, obviously. Everybody's doing great, physically with my family, and there's no issues with mom or baby right now and we're really lucky and fortunate to be in that situation and I'm just going to go out there and help the guys win. That's really all I can do.

Q. Just curious, we had a little girl about a year ago and I've got a million pictures, how many pictures have you taken so far of your little girl?
DANIEL HUDSON: A lot man, yeah. We had a photographer come in yesterday. Obviously, I have two older girls as well, so this is my third girl. My oldest is 5, my middle one is 3. So needless to say my oldest was pretty excited to meet her new baby sister yesterday. So to be able to have that experience with my family and be there for the whole thing was everything I could have imagined. Obviously, it is my third kid. And top-3 things in my life 1A, 1B and 1C are -- was being there fore the birth of all three of my daughters.

So like I said, organization was awesome for me, to let me be a part of that, it was great.

Q. Congratulations. You've been apart of a lot of teams. What is it about this team that maybe is different or special? And do you believe in karma? I mean, your manager goes down your center fielder goes down, people step up.
DANIEL HUDSON: Yeah, I mean, it's a very resilient group. How many times everybody talks about the record that they started off with and all the wins that were accrued after that and best team in baseball for however long. And it just shows the amount of fight, like you said, and in all these guys and I think it goes to, it's a testament of a lot of those guys. And they have been around the game for a long time, they know exactly what needs to be done, there's no panic ever. Obviously, going down early against the Dodgers and then against the Brewers, you just see the fight in these guys and they, everybody wants to just kind of pass the baton and keep the ball rolling for everybody else.

Q. Having gone through it before as you did, I'm sure you know, like, what it would have been like to miss it. Could you imagine what it would have been like to miss it and how that, like, if you had come here out of a sense of duty, your mind would have been on back home. Did you think about the alternative?
DANIEL HUDSON: Not really. I don't know, I knew I was going to go no matter what. It's kind of -- I didn't realize that, I didn't know that this was a new thing to have a playoff paternity leave list. I had no idea. I was, like, I can't be the only person to have a baby in the middle of the postseason. And for it to blow up like it did, man, it's kind of crazy. But I didn't really give much thought about not going. My family is top priority for me. I heard somebody say one time baseball's what I do, it's not who I am. And kind of once you have kids or once I had kids it really resonated with me. So to be able to be a part of that was awesome. And like I said, I can't thank the Nationals organization enough for being understanding.

Q. I know you went with Millie this time around, but Anibala Sean be in the mix should you have any more children?
DANIEL HUDSON: I don't --

(Laughter.)

Yeah, that, Davey, that was a funny message he sent me last night. Yeah, we were actually undecided on a name at that point. We didn't actually figure out a name until we went to bed last night. We kind of finally decided on Millie and, yeah, my wife got a good kick out of that, that was pretty funny.

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