AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ANGELS v TWINS

October 9, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I think you said it right there: It's a challenge. You got a lot of different throwers out there. We didn't even see Weber tonight. Those guys all have different looks. They have great sliders. First time we've seen the kid, wow, ball was jumping out of his hand. Then you got Percival to end it up. That's pretty good. That's why they're where they're at. They did a number out there. I thought we did pretty good, had some good battles. We gave ourselves a chance late. Made too many mistakes early. But we had a chance, we had some runners on, had some opportunities.

RON GARDENHIRE: Eric is really fired up. You know, he was going really good and then he hurt his knee and had to sit out for a while. That kind of flustered him a little bit. He's come back off that now. He's pumped up. He's ready for this. He's very excited. I know he threw a great game against Oakland. We look for him to do that again. We're going against I think it's Washburn, he's pretty good, too. So it ought to be a good battle. Two good left-handers.

RON GARDENHIRE: I think the problem with Jacque is some of their pitchers are really throwing good right now. It's not -- we're having some guys struggle a little bit. Jacque is getting after it, he's missing some pitches right now. He'll get rolling. No, I won't take him out against Washburn, he'll be facing him. He's our leftfielder. He plays very well out there. He'll get some hits. He's a good player. Jacque has been there all year for us. I don't think you give up on our guys right now. We're 1-1 here. We're battling pretty hard. Tonight it didn't work out. Like I said, we didn't make enough plays early in the game. But I think we have a pretty good chance still.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, you're down 4-0, you try not to get any deeper than that. Reed actually picked it up pretty good. Made a lot of mistakes behind him. The game should have been 2-0, instead we had it 4-0. You get in that situation, you don't want to get down too many runs. It happened really quick when they finally scored their last two runs. You get a triple, Glaus hitting the ball off the rightfield baggy down the corner. That's an unusual play. He doesn't normally do that. He hits a triple. Then you got Fullmer, who we're trying to pitch around him - not around him, but make him chase and try to get him roll over a ground ball. He hits a home run. A changeup up, so... We had Santana in the situation. If we get to Spiezio there, I'll probably end up going to him, trying to get him to hit a ground ball, double play. We just didn't get to him.

RON GARDENHIRE: I have to think about this, now. I have to think about the second inning. They hit a couple balls, one ball in the gap got through. They hit the bloop down the rightfield line.

RON GARDENHIRE: We did everything right, we just -- we threw the ball home. We did the first fake to third, throw to first, thought they'd try to run there. We got everything right. We picked the guy off first, Doug turned and threw home, but he threw it on the first base side of home, A.J. had to reach back, ends up getting the ball kicked out. We actually should have been out of it -- that was a two-run play. That run scores, then they get the bloop base hit. Another run scores. We actually did what we set up to do, and we just didn't get the guy out at home plate. The guy kicked the ball out of his foot. I don't know what we could have done more. Doug ran at him, stopped, had the guy half way, threw home and it just so happened he just threw to the first base side of home plate instead of the third base side of home plate and that's how the guy had scored. I thought we did everything right there. We just didn't catch the ball at the end and it was a really tough play for A.J.