AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

October 5, 2003

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I told our guys to keep their heads up. There were only four teams left in the American League, and we were one of them. We played all right. We played our hearts out. We got after it as best we could. Johan was just a little up today. They got on him. Scored some runs off him. But the guys played their tails off all year long. When we got down in the first half, they said we were out of it. I think we played as good as anybody in the second half. Ran off 10 in a row at the end of the year to win a pennant. I'm proud of those guys. They played their tails off.

RON GARDENHIRE: You know you're going to run up against a buzz saw when you run up against their pitching staff. We saw the same thing early in the year, unbelievable, when they ran off 16 in a row. We were part of that. As far as we are concerned, we don't know what happened in the middle part of the year. They're on that same roll now. Every one of them went out there and pitched their tails off. You're going to say we're not swinging good. Good pitching does that to hitters. We got a young bunch of hitters, but, man, they pitched. You look at all the guys that ran out there. The one thing you forget about is Posada, he does a great job of calling a ball game for those guys. It's a great staff. He does a great job of handling that staff.

RON GARDENHIRE: Anything can happen in the playoffs. We've seen that year in and year out. They're a confident bunch. They played some tight games with us. They went out there and took it to us, got some big hits. If they start hitting, they win a lot of games. That's why they won all their games, they won a hundred plus games. They're the best team in the league. Somebody has to knock them off right now. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't get it done. We wish them well. I like Joe Torre a lot. Great staff. I like the staff. I have a lot of respect for them. I wish them well. Derek Jeter is as good a player as there is in this league. He leads that baseball team and does a very good job of it.

RON GARDENHIRE: Not really. You know, we get a split in New York. Had a shot at 2. Got it late in the one game. They got some big hits when they had to. There wasn't a lot of hits out there. The two games here, we just couldn't hit. We didn't hit them. They pitched and they pitched. Pettitte really shut us down in New York. Then they come down here and Roger was Roger. He pitched. The bottom line of the whole series was pitching by the Yankees, kind of dominated us. We really didn't get too much done offensively.

RON GARDENHIRE: He was just up. You could see it. He had good velocity, good breaking ball, good change-up. Couple guys, 0-2 on Bernie, slider down the middle, the guy hits it for a double. On Nick Johnson, he got him 1-2, fast ball, sailed to the middle of the plate. He just missed. He was just up a little bit. As far as the leg goes, he was throwing the ball like he normally does. He just made some pitches out and over the plate. Unfortunately, they were able to bang them today. You get away with them sometimes, but not too often against those guys. I thought Eric Milton came in, it was great for us to see him on the mound in the playoffs. He did a great job. He came out and really threw the baseball for us. That was very exciting for our baseball team, for him to keep us there. You always look for positives. That's a big positive, seeing Eric Milton back on the mound for us. I really liked our rendition of God Bless America today, I thought it was wonderful.