MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. Scott, in all the situational hitting you did with you and your dad, were you ever in that situation?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: He always seemed to use it as Game 7. I guess I'll be able to use that tomorrow. The thing about it is he tried to put me in the toughest situation so that any other situation didn't seem as tough. So, tomorrow, it's going to be real. I'm looking forward to it. But I've used all that visualization and situational hitting through my whole career. I used it tonight again.
Q. We're all pretty much aware of how the rally monkey affects the fans. How does it affect you as players?
TROY GLAUS: I think it really gets the crowd going. They start making a bunch of noise. They get going. I think, for us, just the fact the crowd is making noise, yelling, screaming, real excited about the upcoming situation, it makes everybody on the team excited and getting ready. We just want to do it for them.
SCOTT SPIEZIO: I've said this a couple times, these games, they're just incredibly long. They're mentally, physically draining. To have the fans get behind you and give you that boost of adrenaline you need, late in the game, tonight, they never gave up. We never gave up. It would have been hard to do without them. If it takes the rally monkey to get them going a little bit more, we love it (smiling).
Q. Can you go through the at-bat where you hit the home run? Did you know it was gone when you hit it or did you have to watch it?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: I'll just get to that first. I didn't know it was gone when I hit it.
Q. Did you think it was?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: I was praying (laughter). I was saying, "God, please, just get over the fence." Seemed like it took forever. Rodriquez has been tough on me this whole series. He's been in every game, I think. Seems like I faced him every time he's come in. I haven't hit one on the barrel yet. I've just missed some balls. I kept fouling balls off that at-bat. I kept telling myself that I was right on it, just keep looking for a pitch to hit. I finally got one that was in my zone. I finally got the head on it. Just enough of it to get it out.
Q. Troy, your at-bat, as well, obviously, he had the slider going. You worked the count to 2-1. Were you looking fast ball there, something over the plate?
TROY GLAUS: I was looking for, basically, at that point, hit a groundball, do something, try to score one run, tie the ballgame up, give ourselves a little more life. Fortunately, he left a slider up. I was able to get it over the outfielders. I was going sack fly, groundball to second, whatever. I didn't really care. I somehow wanted to get Chone in from third base.
Q. What has Mickey Hatcher meant to the development of the team's hitting? Scott, in particular, I'd like to ask you the kind of influence he has had with your offensive success this season.
SCOTT SPIEZIO: I think the best thing about Hatch is he knows when to leave you alone. There's a lot of coaches out there that just want to keep tinkering with everybody, messing with their mechanics. I think sometimes the best teachers are people that work with you. When you're at this level, we all know what our mechanics are, we all know what our mental makeup is. He's great at supplementing that. When we need some advice, he'll watch tapes with you, he'll give you tips here and there. But if you tell him, "Hey, I don't want any tips right now, I feel pretty good," he's great at leaving you alone and on your own. I think that's huge for a coach to do that. He helped me a lot. He likes it when I'm aggressive. In the past, I've had coaches that wanted me to take more pitches. He's been a guy that's told me just to be aggressive up there. That's how I'm going to have my best at-bats. That's helped me tremendously.
TROY GLAUS: Spring training set up with where we have lower fields down below. Sometimes during spring training, Hatch will take one guy down there, it's been me, a year before last, a couple guys this year, and he'll just throw tirelessly, continue to throw, continue to throw, not say a word until you figure it out. We are our best coaches. We know what feels good, we know what doesn't feel good. I think he kind of swallows his pride a little bit on that, by not coaching and just throwing and letting us figure it out until we get to a point where, "Okay, that feels good."
SCOTT SPIEZIO: He's a smart hitting coach. He does give you points that help you out here and there. He's an incredibly hard worker. He'll never tell you no if you want extra hitting. But we're just saying we think the best point is sometimes he'll swallow his pride and say, "Hey, I believe in you guys, go and get 'em."
Q. You were 2-20 before the seventh, 8-12 after. It's the fifth time this post-season that you've come back in such dramatic fashion. What is about this team that allows you to never, ever say "die"?
TROY GLAUS: I think it starts from the top. Scios breeds that, he never changes. Regardless of the situation, whether it's the first inning and we're down 5-0 or it's the eighth inning down 5-0. Put our at-bats together, get some guys on base, do something, try to get the offense going. Tonight, it worked out in the seventh and the eighth.
Q. Scott, looked like you were -- I don't know if it was meditation. You closed your eyes. Talk about what you were feeling after you got back to the dugout after the home run. If you could both answer, has it sunk in yet that you're one win away from winning the World's Championship?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: After I hit it, yeah, I was just going over the feeling in my head to try to remember that. Mentally, it helps me after I have a successful at-bat to replay it in my head, imbed it in there for future use. I was just trying to tell myself that there's still a long way to go. You're going to have another important at-bat. I was getting myself prepared for that next at-bat, as well.
Q. Has it sunk in that one win and you're the World Champions?
TROY GLAUS: I don't know about that. Every team plays in the hopes to have -- to be able to win the World Series, whether that's the fourth game or seventh game, I don't think it matters to anybody. We'll approach tomorrow's game just like we've approached the last 175 or 80 games now. We'll play hard, we'll play a hundred percent, we'll leave it on the field, we'll see where we end up.
Q. Troy, did you think Scott's ball was out? What kind of boost did that give the team at that point? Scott, this might be stupid, but is this the biggest hit you've ever had in your career?
TROY GLAUS: As a base runner in that situation, when he hit the ball, I wasn't necessarily worrying about if it was out or not. My job in that situation is to tag at third base. I put my foot on the bag, watched the ball, it went over the fence. A night like tonight, when it was chilly outside, the ball doesn't carry very well. You never know. I wasn't going to take anything for granted that it was gone or anything like that. I was going to run the bases like we were taught how to run it.
Q. What kind of boost did it give the team?
TROY GLAUS: At that point, he made it 5-3. Obviously, we're a whole lot closer. Coming back from five runs is difficult. Coming back from two is not necessarily easier, but a little bit more viable of a situation. Now we could play the game like we wanted to. We can steal bases, hit-and-run, bunt, do things like that.
Q. Was it the biggest ever?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: Yeah, it's probably got to be the biggest hit I've ever had. Situation, Game 6 of the World Series, us being down. Giving us a little spark to get back in it. I knew this team, all it needs is a little spark. You never know who's going to supply that spark. Troy did a great job starting it off, getting on, Fullmer with another base hit behind him, getting on. You can't drive in any runs without guys in front of you. They did a great job. I think with some points on the board, that gave the guys something to shoot for. We knew we could do it. This team's amazing. Yeah, I guess it's the biggest at-bat that I've had in my life and the biggest hit. Hopefully, we can -- both of us can have two or three of those tomorrow.
Q. You may be too close to the situation, but can you appreciate how great and how amazing this game really was?
SCOTT SPIEZIO: Yeah, I guess so. Tonight was pretty amazing. You don't want to dwell on it, but it was so amazing that you have to sit back and say, "Wow, that was incredible." But I think it's going to help us, give us a lot of confidence, no matter what happens tomorrow. Until that last out is made again tomorrow, we'll never give up. We're going to go out, be aggressive, play our game, have the same attitude we've had all year.
TROY GLAUS: I mean, I think pending a Game 7 being similar or maybe better, because it's Game 7, I think it would be one of those things where you sit back after the season's over and reflect on it, say, "That gave us our chance, now we got a Game 7." When we go to spring training, you want to be able to play in that game to give yourselves a chance to win the World Series, and we've done that now.
End of FastScripts.
