AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RED SOX v YANKEES

October 17, 2004

David Ortiz

DAVID ORTIZ: Well, he always makes good pitches on me. I don't know if you guys remember last night, he made some tough pitches. Pretty much every time I've faced him, he makes good pitches on me, especially with the fastball coming right at me and going back to the plate. I noticed this and he give it to me a couple of times, one for ball and one for strike. It's a good pitch. I guess it's a good pitch from a right-hander to a left-hander because once it's coming, you give up and I was kind of looking for it.

DAVID ORTIZ: Well, I can tell you one thing right now. Rivera, he's throwing his best. He's throwing the best that I have seen him pitch since last year. He's really making good pitches and it's hard to score on Rivera. When he makes mistakes, that's when you have the opportunity. He walks a guy and then we have Dave Roberts coming in, stealing a base and he put a pitch over the plate for Bill. That's the only way you can score a run against him, because otherwise, he's not up there making many mistakes.

DAVID ORTIZ: Well, you know, we are playing against a team that is strong all the way around. Whenever you get the chance to go for it and get the opportunity to win a game against them, you've got to try hard because they don't give you a chance. We are 3-1 right now. You never know what can happen, but we're going to keep playing the game.

DAVID ORTIZ: Well, we're at home. You know that when you are playing at home, anything can happen. So, this is a team that never gives up. You guys know that we had a whole bunch of games coming from behind like that, and played hard. Even if we lose the game, we still play the game right. So I guess when you're watching a team play the game like that, I think that the team deserves respect, because we know that's what we get from people. We just keep playing that way. I think that's the way the game is supposed to be played, either if you win or lose, you have to keep playing hard till the last out.

DAVID ORTIZ: I don't know, it's a winning homer, it's a winning hit, and I guess everybody enjoys it the same way. We was playing again tonight and pretty much if we don't win that game, we would be packing right now. We'd be facing another situation. You never know. Things can change. You never know what can happen from now on. We played a really good game tonight. It was totally different than the game we played last night. I'm just going to count it like one of the good hits.