AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

September 29, 2003

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: Quite a bit. We knew that was going to be a big topic. That is just a two-year setup, folks. That's all it is. We're setting them up for two years now to get them in the playoffs. We're going to have some fun. We have come a long ways, we've had an up-and-down year. Looking forward to this. Should not get much better in baseball coming to Yankee Stadium, a young baseball team getting to play these guys. They are a great team. We look forward to this. We know we have not had success against them. In April I don't think too many people had success against the Yankees. We are going pretty good now. We know they are playing great baseball. That's what makes it a fun time of year.

RON GARDENHIRE: That's part of the setup. We had some injuries to our staff early. Joe Mays was struggling through some elbow injuries and Johan was out in the bullpen. We had a pretty good setup in spring training, looking at a lot of teams, if you get six or seven innings from your starters, you can shut down the bullpen. We could stop a game after six or seven innings with those guys. We lost Reed and Santana at different times so that put Johan in the rotation -- that's something he's wanted to do. He's wanted to pitch out of the rotation. We thought he should have got a chance out of spring training. We tried to keep that intact. We put him in the rotation the second half the year and he's been fantastic, great arm, good fastball, going to be 91, 92 miles an hour. He's got a great changeup and a decent slider. He can move the ball in and out. He can be a power pitcher if he has to be. He's a good athlete and he handles himself very well.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, like I said, one thing is great stuff, it always helps when you have that. He's got a great arm. He's a good athlete. He has handles himself very well. Very calm. He doesn't try to do too much. He'll try to tell you, good or bad, I did the best I could. When I get that out of a pitcher that's all I ask. If I take him out of the ballgame after he's given up a couple of runs, he'll say, "I did the best I could." That's all I care about. That's what I said to him for tomorrow, do the best you can. We knows it's going to be hard, Yankee Stadium. We know it's going to be a big crowd. He's got enough arm and a head on his shoulders, he's a good kid. He's got great energy, a great smile and we look to it.

RON GARDENHIRE: He was my first manager in the Major Leagues. A lot of people know that by now. He gave me a chance in spring training. He gave me a hell of a big number, but it was nice. He kept me almost all the way through my first spring in the Major Leagues with him and he called me up in September, gave me a chance to play. I've always looked at Joe kind of like a father figure, as a manager-type guy. He's very calm in everything that he does. I know that most of the people here that have been around him know that. He'll walk up to you, put his arms around you and tell you stuff like, "Kid, put that in your memory bank," after you've screwed up something pretty bad. He handles himself well. You always look up to people like that. He's a great manager, a lot of fun to be around. As a player, he was great. If you couldn't play for Joe, you could not play for anybody.

RON GARDENHIRE: It was way up there, like 69 or something like that. 66 maybe. I've got the uniform. I can go look.

RON GARDENHIRE: I've got it.

RON GARDENHIRE: Why not.

RON GARDENHIRE: Playing against Shannon Stewart we always thought he was a good hitter. He handled himself well at the plate. We are always looking to improve our lineup. As we went along through the season, we kind of struggled in the RBI slots driving in runners and we knew Jacque Jones could do things. You are always looking to improve your on-base percentage and all those things. Billy Beane will tell you that. We thought we could get a guy who could get good at-bats, carry them and show our younger kids what it's all about, how to prepare yourself. He has done that. He puts together a lot of good at-bats, he fights pitches off. He's helped a lot of guys in the lineup. Preparation before the game, making sure you are ready before the first at bat he does all of those things. He's been a professional hitter and he's been very big for us.

RON GARDENHIRE: We had a meeting right before the All-Star Break matter of fact. We talked about a lot of different things, getting through this thing coming back with a lot of different focus. We talked about getting our focus back on the baseball field and trying to get all of the outside issues out. We talked about, if we pitched, we have a good chance. If we could get our starting pitchers on a roll, we had a good chance to get back in this thing. That's exactly where we went to. It was all about our starting pitcher. We knew once they got on a role and we knew they would, because they are quality people and quality pitchers. That's what we talked about, pitching, defense and getting back to keeping everything focussed on the field rather than all of the off-the-field stuff.

RON GARDENHIRE: (Laughs). I don't, personally. I understand why we would be. We are coming into the New York Yankees, a great baseball team, one of the best records in the game, if the best record in the game. You are supposed to be. We don't. We try to live inside our clubhouse. We have a lot of heart in our clubhouse. We know what we can and can't do. When we get out of our game we get ourselves in trouble. We can't look at ourselves as underdogs. We know we have the opportunity to take it to the people if we play our game. That's the way we try to live. We live inside our clubhouse, keep it inside our clubhouse and pull together. We have done pretty well the second half of the season and continue that. We were underdogs to the White Sox, going into that series, everybody said they were going to be -- we just don't look at it that way. We know what we have and what we have to do. If we are able to execute, we'll be okay.

RON GARDENHIRE: We kind of try to block everything out. If we can keep all of the outside fire balls from landing inside that clubhouse, we are okay. That's what got us in trouble in the first half, contract talks, all of those things. We have kind of separate that had now. We have stayed within ourselves, focused on the baseball field, doing the fundamental things right, bunts, signs, pitching and catching the ball. When we do that and stay inside ourselves, we're fine.