AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RED SOX v YANKEES

October 12, 2003

Mike Mussina

MIKE MUSSINA: Well, I don't plan on making too many adjustments. I'm going to pitch the game the way I've always pitched it, and I'm going to try to be effective with it. Being on five days' rest is better than seven or eight, so that will be a lot more like normal.

MIKE MUSSINA: You know, I don't know which way to answer that. I think this is a pretty heated rivalry. It's the American League Championship Series. There's a lot of tension. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of anxiety. So, it's going to happen in the game from time to time. I don't know whether it's an embarrassment or not.

MIKE MUSSINA: Well, we don't look at it as urgency. It's one ballgame, and it's obviously an important ballgame. We get to this point, we want to win every game that we play. You just have to go out there and play well. You can never think momentum is on one side or the other in a series like this. It can switch in one day so you have to be prepared to go out there and play your best ballgame no matter what's happened the day before.

MIKE MUSSINA: Well, I think we all understand that in a playoff series, you don't win the whole series all at one time. You only win it one game at a time. And until four games are won, the series is never over. We were in the same situation with Oakland a few years ago and we got out of it and ended up in the seventh game of the World Series. So I don't think any of us are taking anything for granted and we would never assume that any series is over until it's over.

MIKE MUSSINA: I don't know if they do or they don't. We'll have to find out. I can't tell you what's going to happen. Will it affect the way we approach the game? Probably not. We all have our way to approach the other team, and we're going to do that until we're told that we can't. I think that both sides are going to go out there and pitch the game they intend to pitch and let the game dictate what they are allowed and not allowed to do.

MIKE MUSSINA: I think we all approach the game the same way in the season. We face teams in back-to-back starts more than one time during the year. As the starting pitcher you have to remember that the other team has faced three or four or five other starters in between the two starts that I'm going to make, for example. So you just have to remember that they are not facing you six or seven at-bats in a row. They have seen a few other pitchers for a couple of games.

MIKE MUSSINA: No, I don't think I would try to do anything differently. I didn't have the best command of the baseball that day. So if you can't command the baseball, there's some things you can't do or you try to do and it just doesn't happen the way you would like it to. But I don't think I would approach it any differently. You make pitches and a guy hits one off the foul pole and opposite field and one that goes two feet over the fence, ball off the end of my glove for an infield hit, it's really close to being one or two runs instead of four. So no, I wouldn't change anything.

MIKE MUSSINA: I've never heard of any issues as far as security goes. Like I said, this is a long-standing rivalry, and in a post-season atmosphere, everything is elevated a little bit from the regular season. The regular season, it's a pretty exciting series anyway. So, I've never seen a problem or heard of a problem.