AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

September 30, 2003

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I thought he had enough pitches. He was done. (Laughter.) No, I'm just kidding. Still biting my lip a little bit. That was pretty intense. He cramped up. His legs cramped up; his right leg I believe it was. He had that earlier in the year it. Was a hot day. I guess there's no explanation, it was not that hot down there. He cramped down in the dugout and he wasn't going to make it. He had some soreness in his leg. He's been there before, I don't know how to explain it, the doctors just said, it happens. Unfortunately it happened when he was throwing the ball well, we had to piece it together and our bullpen did a good job.

RON GARDENHIRE: Game 4. He'll be ready for Game 4. I'll be nursing him myself. I'll be rubbing his leg. The training room is my office now for Santana. We should have him back. Last time it was the same thing, he was ready to go for his next start five days. We'll have him back for then.

RON GARDENHIRE: I thought the whole bullpen did that pretty good. It's a great lineup. Hawk came in and we talked about maybe being able to use him for two innings with the days off. Didn't know it was going to turn out like this. I had Romero up for one batter in the seventh to get Matsui and I was going to bring the Hawk in no matter which way it went. He came in throwing the baseball. He's been pouring it in there pretty about. His fastball was jumping and he did a great job against a lot of good hitters.

RON GARDENHIRE: We were just trying to figure out -- I'm looking at my pitching staff, my bullpen to figure out how we were going to piece it together. That's all I could do. It was frustrating for the kid. If meant a lot to him for him to be out on the mound and I felt bad for him because he wanted to be out there and you could see he was not going to make it. You start looking at how you are going to piece it together. One thing you don't do is show panic in the dugout. So I just said, well, let's have some fun, we are going to piece it together, and that's what we did.

RON GARDENHIRE: Absolutely. He's a great pitcher. All of the talk, we've had a lot of trouble in our history with him. We're playing pretty good. We've been playing baseball pretty good. We feel great with our pitching staff. Santana has been throwing great. We get enough hits when we have to. We get a lot of opportunities. He pitched out of some jams -- that's how good teams become great teams. They pitch out of jams and he did that. The first inning, scored a run, he pitched his tail off. Our guys did, too, though. Our guys made some plays and so do did they. I thought it was a heck of a baseball game. Stewart's catch late in the game that was fantastic. That's what we are here for is to try to win. We didn't come in to say we want a split; we came in to play each game and go at it just like that. Game 1 is over and we won that one. Now we are going to try to win Game 2.

RON GARDENHIRE: Matsui is a very good outfielder, solid in all respects. He gets to the ball, he made an accurate throw. We have to play like that. That's the only way we can play is win baseball games is run around the bases hard, take extra bases try to do those things. We have been thrown out many times in those situations. We don't hit the ball out of the ballpark often. That's how we play it. It was a great play by Guzman. We expect that. We expect to take those chances.