NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ASTROS v CARDINALS

October 18, 2005

Tim Purpura

TIM PURPURA: Well, I think one distinct advantage is that this team has won in this ballpark in the post-season. You know, we won a game here. I think that gives us a lot of confidence to know that we can win another game here, and that's what it takes. You know, last year, obviously we had two bites at the apple. This year we've got three, and we've got two more to go. I think the feeling is that this is -- we're still in the lead. We're up 3-2. We can win this thing. We've got one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball going tomorrow, and we've got another dominant pitcher going the night after that. So we feel, certainly, very well set up for it. Last year obviously our pitching wasn't as strong, particularly coming into when we came back to St. Louis. And so I think that certainly the tenor and the mood is very positive at this point. I think we've got the confidence to know that we can win here.

TIM PURPURA: Well, we drafted Brad out of the University of Notre Dame and almost from day one, he had elbow issues. He used to throw a big overhand curveball that would give him problems on a regular basis. We had to shut him down, I'd say, at least two or three times his first year. Throughout the course of his Minor League career, his first four seasons, he only had 100 innings pitched. We drafted him as a starter and he was a first-round pick and our idea was to groom him as a starter. But injuries got in the way. The elbow was the first thing. He had a scope of his elbow, then he had a scope of his shoulder. He got hit by a comebacker, fractured his forearm and then as he -- right after he made his Major League debut he tore, very severely, cartilage in his knee. So here is a guy that from our point of view, four years, and you're not in the big leagues and been in college at a good program, time begins slipping away. Our perspective at that point was to try to find a way to get him to the big leagues. And we did that as a reliever, and he obviously moved into the closer role. What he went through, what he endured in those four or five years, I think really would have -- a lot of guys would have given up because it was one thing after another. It wasn't like he would get healthy and stay healthy for a long period of time. It was, you know, back three, four weeks and then boom, another setback. Something else happened, particularly with the elbow early on. I think that it certainly created a bond that I feel with Brad, you know, as my former role as a farm director, we had a lot of tough conversations. There were a lot of things that we had to work through. I remember one situation where Brad in some ways, he's like a lot of guys. You say, here is the prescription, here is what you need to do, and they think, well, if I do maybe 50 percent more, maybe I'll get better quicker. And the reality is, with a lot of the rehab, is you don't. It can actually set you back. We actually saw him, one of our trainers saw him lifting weights when he was not supposed to be lifting weights. We had a pretty tough conversation about it and I actually threatened to send him home if he wasn't going to conform to the rehab schedule. We laugh about it now but that's his mindset, what can I do to make myself better. He made it through a lot. I've been asked by a lot of people today already, you know, what this will do to Brad Lidge, and I don't think it will do much to Brad Lidge. I think he'll come right back and do what he's done through his whole career. He's a battler, he's a fighter. I think he cares -- he's a player who cares a thousand times more about his teammates than he does about himself. And I think because of that, that gives him that opportunity to kind of flush away games like this and say, hey, I've got to do this for the team. He's not worried about Brad Lidge. He's worried about what can I do to help the Houston Astros win.

TIM PURPURA: It's very difficult to do. Tomorrow I'd pick Roy Oswalt. No, it's very difficult to do. You talk about an embarrassment of riches to have three aces like we do to go out there, and they bring different things to the table. Roy I think in some ways, this is probably the game for him, because he doesn't get the attention. You know, he's not obviously a real outspoken individual. He doesn't get the media attention that Andy and Roger do. But what burns inside of him burns just like it does with Andy and just like it does with Roger. I mean, I can tell a story about him coming up through the development system. I remember when Gerry Hunsicker was the GM and (Larry) Dierker was the manager and Roy was in the low minors, we have an area in our ten-pack in Kissimmee where you have to walk through the two sets of mounds and Roy saw Gerry and Dierker walking through there and he started just nailing it. I mean, high heat. It was pretty impressive showing. He got their attention. They turned around and looked and said, who is this kid? Because he was in the low minors at that point. You know, he's got a certain presence about him. He's got that quiet confidence that it's difficult to teach that. And he's kind of had that since day one.

TIM PURPURA: I think to do that, really would have -- there you're setting up a potentially disastrous situation. The thing that we needed to not do was to walk Edmonds. That was the critical piece of that puzzle, obviously. And once that happened, you know, there's a lot of bad things that could happen and a bad thing did happen. In my mind, there's no second-guessing on that.

TIM PURPURA: Well, I think he's got that attitude of, I can beat you, and no matter who is up there, I can beat you. My best stuff is go going to be better than your ability to hit my best stuff. The way he challenges hitters, the way I think he and Brad have worked very well together, and actually in the past, he's worked with the other catchers very well, too. But he knows what he wants to do out there. He's got a plan, he's got an approach and he can execute his plan and approach as good as anybody that I've seen.

TIM PURPURA: I think it's a confidence factor. You know, maybe he doesn't need that confidence because I think he is a very confident pitcher, but I think the team feeds off that. When you've played behind a guy like a Roy Oswalt, you know he works fast, you know he challenges hitters. He's going to make the game exciting, and I think that confidence level that we are having, again, last year we didn't win here, this year we've already won here once. So I think that helps with that whole confidence factor and how the guys playing behind him feel in their roles. You know, he just comes out with that attitude of, I'm going to beat you.

TIM PURPURA: I would say these last two years, the last two years this ballclub has been through. We've had our backs against the wall for the better part of two seasons. We've had to come-from-behind last year. We've had to come-from-behind this year. You know, we carry on. That's what we're doing, we're carrying on. We don't say, you know, oh, the woe is us, the season is over. We get on a plane, we come here and we're ready to go. Like Roy said, it was a great mood on the plane today, a real positive mood. And I think that says a lot about our players. But just I think going through what we have in the last two years, seeing what this team can accomplish, what it accomplished last year, and now with the different configuration what it's accomplished. You know, there's nobody giving up, nobody is hanging their head, nobody is saying, you know, oh, we're this close to the World Series. Everything I heard from the guys today was, you know, we've got to get 'em tomorrow, and that's a lot of what we've heard over the last two years. We take it game by game, day by day. We try to do our best job today, and hopefully that is good enough and then we go on to tomorrow. I think that's the attitude right now.

TIM PURPURA: I don't know. That's a tough one. I can't think of anything you guys haven't covered about Roger. I mean, I guess the thing that I've learned about him is that despite the tough competitive side, he is I think a terrific teammate. I think he cares a lot about his teammates. Opening Day of our season last year, he comes walking around the clubhouse with these tee shirts and like flannel shirts for every guy in the clubhouse, every clubhouse guy he sent them up to the front office. He's a team guy. You know, I was never around him in his earlier days, so I don't know what he was like then, but from day one, he's impressed me as the ultimate team player. He just has the team in mind. As I've gotten to know his son, Kobe, that's trickled down to Kobe. I think that attitude is right there. You know, that's something that I didn't know about Roger.

TIM PURPURA: You know, I think we all work so hard in this industry to get to this role, to become a general manager. I, like a lot of people, have worked a long time to get here. I think once you get here, you kind of strap yourself in and say, I'm along for the ride here. You have to anticipate almost anything happening. You have to be ready for almost anything. That's what we do. We have to be ready in case of injuries. We have to have backups at AAA or we have to have a game plan in case you don't sign a free agent. You have to prepare yourself, and I think that's because you do that, I mean, that's a natural part of your day is the what ifs. I can't say that I anticipated being 15-30. I can't say I anticipated that we lose that game last night. But when that ball went out, I looked at who was coming up in our lineup next, who could we possibly win the game with. And I think that's kind of the mode you get into in this kind of a role is you deal with the present, but you also have to plan for the future, you have to be ready, you have to be willing to make quick decisions when those are necessary. I think you have to sometimes trust in a lot of people. You have to trust your scouts, you have to trust your manager, your coaches, but more than anything else, you have to trust your players.

TIM PURPURA: Probably. I think it gives everybody a chance to just decompress from the night before. We're in the middle of October already and physically, I think things begin to take a toll on guys, the travel back and forth could be a little bit grueling. So I think it was, and again, I think we had a somewhat leisurely day here, took off around noon and got in here a little after 1:30 or so. It gives guys a little bit more opportunity to relax, go out to dinner and take a break from it. So I don't think that's a bad thing at all in this case that we have that chance to kind of flush it out of our systems and move on.