NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 5, 2004

Phil Garner

PHIL GARNER: Sunday he was in a pretty bad way. I think the virus hit him somewhere around midnight, maybe a little bit before. So he got no sleep. Obviously, all the accompanying problems when you have a stomach virus. You can imagine he was in pretty bad shape, dehydrated, slightly elevated blood pressure. I did get to see him in the trainer's room, he had IVs in him. This was around 15 minutes to 11 perhaps. He looks up, the room's dark. He says, "Skip, give me a few minutes, I'll go out and throw. I think I'll be all right." I said, "Rocket, you stay right there. We'll make other plans." So he was better, but still felt drained yesterday, little bit today. So I think it's taken some energy from him a little bit, but we continue to press on with our plans to start him tomorrow.

PHIL GARNER: You know I'm not a history buff. I don't go back and dwell on those things. I did see those games and I think it's probably a good thing that I've forgotten most of it, or what it was like. I lived in Houston and I was disappointed we didn't do any better in those past playoffs. But that's entirely different. That was then, this is now. I think this is an entirely different ballclub. If anything, I think Craig (Biggio) and Jeff (Bagwell) are going to have to answer questions like that. But this is a totally different ballclub: You have Roger Clemens, Jeff Kent, you have Berkman now, Beltran. You have I would say probably a better supporting cast, if you will, around those guys. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions for the two guys, Craig and Jeff. But the focus is really not on them. We've gotten here because we play well as a team. So if we don't go any farther, it's because we don't play well as a team, it won't be because of those two guys. I would consider that being the biggest difference. Perhaps the focal point was on Jeff and Craig in those days. Today it should be on our team, because that's the way we play.

PHIL GARNER: I think Gerry (Hunsicker) and I will probably announce what our roster will be in just a little bit. I do have the lineup. It's the lineup we've been going with, Brad Ausmus is catching, Roger is pitching. It will be the same lineup we've been going with. In terms of Roger's schedule, yes, I would prefer that he be able to have his schedule because he is very anal about his schedule, there's no question. He just sticks to it, absolutely nothing else comes in the way of that. But he's also, I think, a guy that can get focused and do what he has to do. So he will be prepared, I'm sure he will be mentally prepared, and while physically he may not be at top -- in top shape, I still think he'll be okay.

PHIL GARNER: I think they take their lead from Bobby Cox and Bobby is certainly one of the most professional men in all of baseball. You have to hand it to him for the streak he has -- I don't know if you call this a streak or you call this a dynasty. What he's done in 13 years down here has been absolutely fantastic. I feel this is a genuine group of guys over there. I don't feel like anybody's trying to blow smoke or trying to defuse us in any way. I think when they answer those questions, they're sincere. I think I don't think there's any sort of gamesmanship that goes on. I think Bobby plays the game straight, he's an excellent manager. You're never going to catch him sleeping, catch him surprised. I think this is just part of his professionalism, that he does this thing the right way. I think he gives credit where he feels like credit is due. I don't think he's trying to do anything about it. I think he's very honest in his answers.

PHIL GARNER: Well, there's no question that Roger has shown a great deal of leadership, and he also brought something else that maybe is even grander than what we had before - that's intensity, like I think many people have never seen, and a will to win. There were a few of those ballgames that he simply willed to win, it appeared to me. He was just gonna do it, whether he did it with his bat or he was going to do it with his pitching. Something else, once we got the lead, if we added on to the lead, he just absolutely closed the door on the opposition, wouldn't let them get back in it. So he did a couple of those kind of things that I felt like was important. But you give a lot of accolades to Rog, there's no question. The Rocket has been fantastic. To do it to the exclusion of everybody else would not be right, nor would it be a fair assessment of what our ballclub has done. At any given time, Roger every fifth day, certainly down this stretch, our bullpen has emerged and they've been absolutely fantastic when we needed it to be fantastic. At any given day, you go back over this series, you can pick Biggio, Beltran, right on down our lineup, the guys off the bench and we don't win unless somebody has a fantastic day in that whole stretch. So it's truly been a team effort, maybe it's cliche, but that's been the truth.

PHIL GARNER: For the next three games (laughter). And then I say that because I haven't looked at it beyond that.

PHIL GARNER: No.

PHIL GARNER: We have come back a few times, and that's something that we didn't do going in to August of this year. We really hadn't come back as a team and win ballgames. So we did come back a few times. But when we needed to play our best ball, we did play our best ball. When it looked like it could have been tough times, we were going in to play St. Louis. Everybody I think would say in the National League right now, St. Louis has played the absolute best this summer. They made a mockery of this division race. We played good against them there, and we swept them at home when we needed to. I think that's most gratifying, that when we've had to play, and we absolutely had our backs against the wall, we did it.

PHIL GARNER: I agree. I have seen him on the other side of the field and I have not liked him very well. I find that I like him when I'm on his side. I don't think I ever saw us win a game against him. But there is a different Rocket when you're on the same team. He's very supportive of his teammates. Teammates are very supportive of him. The intensity sometimes, I think when you're on the other side of the fence, can be misconstrued. It's almost like it's a challenge to war, if you will, or challenge to fight, when it's not necessarily that . It's in the man himself just trying to do what he does. That's his nature, that's his personality. It's how he operates. I'm telling you, it's something to watch. The guy is absolutely fantastic.

PHIL GARNER: No, no. Did he ever get me? Absolutely not. Wait a minute, this accolade can only go so far (laughing).

PHIL GARNER: He threw harder in those days, he was in the 94, 95 range consistently. I saw him when he was in Boston and then in New York, managed against him when he was in Boston and New York. He dominated our teams. But I've seen him do the same thing with not quite the velocity now, he'll be in the 92 range and occasionally bounce up to 94. He still has excellent control of his slider, has a terrific split, and he'll use his curveball at some point in the game when he wants to. So he's absolutely fantastic. What I see more on a daily basis now about his pitching, you could see then, I didn't have good teams, a whole lineup of good hitters. So now that I see him all the time when he pitches, he really manages the other team's lineup well. He pitches to who he wants to and he'll work around who he doesn't want to. The interesting thing is when he doesn't want to pitch to a guy, he usually closes the door when he gets to the next guy. So it's a beautiful thing to watch. A lot of times guys try to do that and then they end up losing the guy that they didn't want to pitch to. They go to the next guy and lose him, too. But Rog just doesn't do that. Most all the time he will close the door on that guy he wanted to get around.

PHIL GARNER: Well, it's an interesting -- it's interesting. When I've been here, it's because - in 1979 when I was a player - we had to win on the last day, Carlton had to beat Montreal the last day to avoid a playoff for the pennant. We had momentum going with us. We felt like Baltimore had closed it a little sooner. It was a very tough World Series. I tend to lean towards the momentum thing. We have not had a chance to look up and take a breath or to say, "You get a day off here and you get a day off there and we'll take a rest." We've had to keep grinding the whole way. I actually think if you ask all our players if they would have rather started this thing yesterday - today, I think we would have flown in yesterday, started it today, I think we were ready to go. Sure, guys could be a little bit tired, could be a little bit beat up, but I think we have this thing, momentum going on our side right now. We're feeling real good about the way we're playing. I would think that we feel like that's probably in our favor at this moment.

PHIL GARNER: Well, I think that -- we saw him in Atlanta, we saw him here. I didn't see Atlanta prior to that. I don't think -- in a short series, it's hard to make full assessments. He did impress us. I don't think he started the amount of play -- he came in one game and played against us. Rookies in the playoffs, I think it's entirely up to the individuals. I've seen some that are fantastic. A lot of times in these playoffs, when the limelight, it's on the big guys, it's sometimes these other guys that come along and play real well. We've seen it time and time again. So we won't take anybody lightly; I can tell you how important we think he is.