AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

October 4, 2003

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: Yeah, we are missing opportunities. Got to second, Clemens pitched his tail off and Mariano did what he did, Rivera is pretty good, too. They moved the ball in and out, they made a lot of great pitches. We chased. That's what happens in playoff times, you run into pitchers that are throwing the ball, they find holes, they didn't find any today. We did a good job. I thought we did a pretty damned good job, too. Lohse pitched his tail off, Matsui was -- he was looking over his head, he clicked on the fastball and he's a veteran hitter, that's why he's a great player. He was looking for something and hit the ball in the upper deck and Lohse battled his tail off after that. But they got it done. And for the Japanese press, when I say "cheating," I don't mean cheating, I mean cheating to get the fastball. (Laughter.) I would never say that, just so you understand.

RON GARDENHIRE: We've gone with this lineup for a long, long time. It's been successful. It's got us to where it's at. If we mix something up, I don't know where it would be, we've got the right guys, we just have to get some hits. Some of the guys in the lineup have to start banging the ball a little better. There's not too many options really. That was our best lineup. That's the one that got us here, like I said. We stay with those boys; those boys can hit. We've been here before. We were in the same situation last year. We've been here before. Now you've just got to bow your neck and go at it.

RON GARDENHIRE: He's a great competitor. That says it all for me. I grew up at that school, too. The guy can pitch; he can flat out pitch. You see him out there huffing and puffing. He takes deep breaths. When he got into a little bit of a jam you can see him step back and find a little extra. That's why he's been doing it so long. You have to respect him out there, he was trying everything, he kept making pitch after pitch to us.

RON GARDENHIRE: Luis was scuffling here like a lot of our guys. He didn't have too many chances; the only guy we had at third base. We looked at the lineup there and said, hey, they have first and third here, put a lefthander up there, maybe he will pull a ball through the hole. We didn't have many opportunities to score and that was the one opportunity with a man on third. Ryan has been swinging good, I think the second pitch he could have gotten a piece of. He took it. He didn't have too many options. We knew he was scuffling a little bit, ran him up there to see what might happen. Didn't work out but he didn't have too many chances.

RON GARDENHIRE: Against Wells? I doubt it. He's a right-handed hitter. He's been our DH. You could say that about everybody in the lineup. We are not exactly clicking on all cylinders but there's great pitchers we are facing right now. Matty has a chance to do some damage. These are great pitchers we are facing. We stick with our players. They got us here. We believe in them, we are going to play another game tomorrow, get after them as best we can with that lineup and take our chances. They are our guys, and we have a lot of pride in ourselves.

RON GARDENHIRE: I don't think it was devastating. It was a great pitch to hit. You knew he had to be looking in there to hit that ball. That was up there neck-high, but he turned on it and put it in the upper deck. We thought we were going to be able to score some runs. If we could have beat the ball around a little bit -- but Clemens pretty much stopped us. He controlled the ballgame. We pounded our tails off just to stay in the game. We had a lot of opportunities, their bullpen came in and did a great job, we mixed and matched as best as we could. I don't think in any way we were devastated in our dugout. We just waited for it to happen and it never did.

RON GARDENHIRE: That was very special it. It was a great moment when he was introduced. The crowd was into it. I'm sure there was -- not too many dry eyes, if you've been around this ballclub for a long time it was a beautiful thing to see him walk back out on that baseball field. I was honored to catch the pitch from him. He means a lot to me and our ballclub and to Minnesota fans. That was a huge moment here and that's something you'll never forget, seeing Al walk back out there. There were times we didn't know what was going to happen, so that was a big moment.

RON GARDENHIRE: We did the same on them. It's not like they are blowing us out and we are not blowing them out. They are executing right now and the last couple of games, they have very good pitchers that have executed. We have not given up a lot of runs ourselves. There have not been a lot of runs scored in this series. It goes to execution. They are doing that. We are doing the same thing with them. We have some great reports. We sent Tom Kelly; it doesn't get any better than that. I don't care who they have scouting if we have somebody like Tom Kelly giving us a report. They are executing right now. We did the first game. We have two more games to go as we look at it, we get after them tomorrow with Santana and then come back with Radke. We are battling these guys and giving them everything we can.