AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

October 8, 2004

Joe Torre

JOE TORRE: It was huge. All the questions marks were will he be able to take the ball and get out there. Once he gets out there, he knows what he's doing. He had to work hard, but it was certainly a game when you consider that Santana is pitching tomorrow, it was really an important game for us.

JOE TORRE: When I said that, I think we all have responsibilities. One of his responsibilities is to pitch, but, you know, it's really tough to go out there and have the sole purpose of putting pressure on yourself because you broke your hand as opposed to winning a ball game. He certainly came up big for us tonight, and the fact that he got in a lot of trouble and was able to pitch out. He kept his composure all night, which I thought was great. We weren't sure if he was going to go out there for the 6th inning, but he was able to get through it.

JOE TORRE: I don't think so. I think it was more thinking than trying to cope with anything. At least we didn't get wind of it. He kept it to himself if it was a problem physically.

JOE TORRE: No, I felt pretty good about him. When he didn't have any problems after pitching in Toronto Saturday physically and talking to him yesterday, he seemed very comfortable when I was sitting in the bullpen with him yesterday during the workout. It was just a general conversation. I don't even think his physical condition came up in the conversation. We were just talking in general terms about baseball, and so I felt pretty good just with his overall demeanor the last couple of days.

JOE TORRE: I didn't fight myself at all. He was getting up. I wasn't waiting for a safe situation. He got ready pretty quickly. The one that probably took more out of me than Mo getting up was Sturtze because we got him up several times. That probably takes him out of the situation for anything more than finishing an inning, if that much. Mo, he didn't -- obviously we had the day off yesterday and he really didn't throw a lot of pitches the day before, so it wasn't a real problem for me. Certainly I would much prefer not to have to bring him in. I wasn't going to wait any longer, though.