AL DIVISION SERIES: RED SOX v ATHLETICS

October 3, 2003

Derek Lowe

DEREK LOWE: Confidence. I feel very comfortable pitching here. I have ever since I've been here. There's a lot that goes into it. Offensively, we score a lot more runs here. There's high grass in the infield, which helps me out. So there's been a lot of things that have gone into that. This time of year, it doesn't really matter where you're pitching. I'm really looking forward to getting a start. I know I got a little taste of it a couple of days ago in relief. We've won three games in a row this year at some point, I know we have. That's our mind-set. We went against two very tough pitchers out in Oakland. I'm answering all the questions at once, by the way.

DEREK LOWE: If anything it's going to help, as crazy as that sounds. My last start was last Thursday. I was looking at nine days of rest. For a starting pitcher, that's a long time not to get in the game. I did feel a little bit rusty a few days ago. Hopefully the rust has worn off. As far as the amount of pitches goes, it won't affect you this time of year. You could pitch significantly more pitches and still be ready Saturday. Come Saturday night this crowd is going to be electric. If anything, the crowd will push you through it.

DEREK LOWE: It's good. The guys are in high spirits. I look at it probably different than you guys do. I look at it from the guys that we face. Hudson and Zito, these guys pitched extremely well. It wasn't necessarily that we lost, it was more that they won. Those games are a little more easy to swallow. You have to bounce back. You have to be positive. There's no sense of putting your head down and feeling sorry for yourselves, because it is what it is, you're down 0-2. We are back home where we played extremely well all year. We have back-to-back games here. You have to look at it, you're pretty much in a do-or-die situation. We understand that. I understand that. Going into tomorrow, our mind-set will be extremely focused and trying to get a few runs off Lilly.

DEREK LOWE: The biggest challenge is emotionally. When you get out there the adrenaline is twice as much as a regular season game. I think that's the biggest thing, is how fast can you settle down. The excitement is there, but preparation-wise you're going to prepare the same and you're going to watch video, you're going to go over experiences you've had against the A's. I think I've started five times in two years. You kind of look at those. Again, the biggest thing is how fast can you emotionally settle down. You won't know until you get out there.

DEREK LOWE: It helps because we were there. We were down 0-2 coming home. Jimy Williams had a saying, don't let us win one game because now we're back in it, and that's the way we feel. If we can win one, the pressure is still on them, as crazy as it sounds, but they've also been here a couple of years ago, and you hear a lot of their players talk about that. They're going to use that in their advantage and not get complacent. We've played, and we've played them good over the last couple of years, and now we have them at home, and it's up to me to go out there and pitch a good game tomorrow.

DEREK LOWE: You can't really even compare. You look at the majority, we've hit a lot of balls in Oakland to left field that would be doubles here, singles, doubles, possibly home runs. You can say the same for them. This ballpark plays so different than Oakland. Oakland at night, even during the day, the ball doesn't carry very well. Here the ball, to left, always carries. I think that's the biggest reason why you see such a change in our offensive statistics here, because of the Wall. We try to play to that. They've got a lefthander going tomorrow. I don't know our lineup. We might have a lot more righthanders. Again, the reason why I have success here is confidence. Our hitters are the same way, they know when in doubt, that Wall is only 300 feet away, and you can always flip one off it, if you can.

DEREK LOWE: Any poor weather always helps the pitcher. No hitter wants to get up there and hit in cold weather. You're the only guy that's moving around. If it is cold, windy, rainy, the ball is not going to carry. The infield is going to be that much slower. Plus there's no sense worrying about it, you have to go out there and win.