MLB WORLD SERIES: MARLINS v YANKEES

October 24, 2003

Josh Beckett

JOSH BECKETT: I'm fine. I'm ready to pitch. They asked me before. They didn't just say, "You got Game 6," they asked me if it was all right. I said, "Yeah, I'm fine." Shouldn't be a problem.

JOSH BECKETT: I mean, I wanted to pitch Game 6, yeah. You always want, I guess, be that guy, take the ball in that last game or whatever. They came and asked me and I just said -- I wanted to see how I felt on my second day. That's usually my stiffest day. I was actually fine. I actually had more stiffness the day after I pitched than I did the second day. I went out, long-tossed, told them I was fine. We just kind of made the decision from there.

JOSH BECKETT: Yeah, no, everything was good. I think I threw like 50 pitches that day, I felt good. That was a little bit different, though. That was on two days' rest, this is on four, my fourth day anyway. I'm looking forward to it. I think, actually, a day less rest is easier to stay sharp than having that extra day, the sixth day.

JOSH BECKETT: No, I never dreamed about what stadium or anything like that. It was kind of a dream to pitch in the World Series. But I was always the hitter in those dreams, though. I always wanted to be the hitter for some reason, hit the home run.

JOSH BECKETT: Not on the second day. You feel sharper with one day less rest than you do with maybe an extra day or two. You get on a routine and your five-day routine or whatever, once you go past that five days, you're not quite as sharp as you were. So I think a day before would probably be even better. I felt pretty sure, I felt like I was hitting my spots and stuff on the two days' rest.

JOSH BECKETT: Too tired to be excited. We got here at 5:30. He's calling me at noon to wake up. So... I'm too tired to be excited today. I'll go home, take a nap and then start thinking about it.

JOSH BECKETT: Yeah, no, I'm very confident going into this start. Yeah, I'm not gonna use that as a crutch or anything like that. I'm confident going in here on three days' rest.

JOSH BECKETT: Yeah, that definitely helps, mentally, going in. If it's something you've never done before, being your first time or whatever, I didn't even have time to think about it in Chicago. So kind of worked out good.

JOSH BECKETT: I skipped my bullpen. I'm gonna do everything else the same, though. I didn't throw bullpen, today would have been my bullpen day. Instead, I had dry work the day before I pitched and I'm just gonna move that to today.

JOSH BECKETT: Guess you can kind of make an argument both ways. I don't really know. Like I said, actually, I had somebody tell me one time, "Just go out there and be less horse shit than they were." I think that sometimes that's the case, they're worse than you or not necessarily you're better than them.

JOSH BECKETT: No. No. I'm not worried about it. I'm just gonna try and execute pitches better than I did last time.

JOSH BECKETT: You think I agreed with that?

JOSH BECKETT: Oh, okay. I don't know. I just think everybody's just resilient. We're not gonna quit. Just when somebody says we can't do something, that motivates us even more to go out there and try to get it done.

JOSH BECKETT: Probably, I mean, whenever you come in and a couple of coaches are standing outside. I mean, you kind of know what happened, everything like that. That was probably the low point, when Jeff Torborg and Brad Arnsberg and those guys got fired. I mean, I guess that's what we needed, though, that's when we turned it around. I was a big fan of both those guys and everything like that. That was probably the lowest point.

JOSH BECKETT: I have a lot of confidence in them. That's one thing about pitching -- I pitched out of the bullpen, also. You just got to put yesterday behind you and go after them today. You can't dwell on what happened yesterday or two days ago or whatever. I think those guys are all strong enough mentally to get over that.

JOSH BECKETT: I have all the confidence in the world in Carl; I always have. I think Carl is really kind of coming into his own now. Like I said, he's a big-game pitcher. He showed that. He's pitched out of the bullpen. He pitched in some big games down the stretch. So I'm confident in Carl, I always have been. He just has been pitching great, so like I said, with me out there, I've been pitching good so people are confident in me. Same thing with Carl. I think we're all pretty confident when he goes out there.

JOSH BECKETT: No, the work's not done. We were in that situation; we were down 3-2 and we came back and ended up winning that last series. If any of our guys are sitting back, trying to relish this moment, they need to snap out of it because we still got to focus. That's a good baseball team over there. We've got to take care of business while we're here.

JOSH BECKETT: I think just confidence, you know. I think I pitched pretty good down the stretch. I just had a lot of confidence coming in. That's probably the biggest key.

JOSH BECKETT: Yeah, he brings a lot of things to the team. One of those bad sweaters, like, Mike, you got one on, too (laughter). We don't really think about the age gap. I mean, he jokes around with us, he calls me "Rook" all the time. We have a good time. He kind of fits the mold of this team. He likes to mess around a lot. Just kind of pick fun at each other, you know, not really get nasty with it, but just we pick at each other and stuff. Just like I did Mike, so... He fits us well.