AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

October 5, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I think everybody picked each other up, some big two-out base hits, so kind of got the ball rolling, and once that thing starts rolling, everybody wants to get involved in it, and we had some big hits, some good at-bats. We have done that before, believe it or not, and it was pretty nice to see. The crowd got into the game. I am sure they were pumping our guys up, and like I said, I wished I could name all the guys who got big hits, but it's kind of one of those snowball affects.

RON GARDENHIRE: Sure, right after that Dougie dived and he has done that all year, we talk about our defense, catching the ball, and he has done that a lot for us, and also, actually, was huge is Milton covering first base, that was a big sign because he is coming off the knee, so he got over there really nice, got to the bag, and I think that kind of relieved me more so than anybody else, but it was nice to see him bust over there on the Astroturf, cover first base, but the real story today was Milty, I thought, Milty did what we needed to have done, he shut them down and gave them a chance to have a big inning and it was a great performance.

RON GARDENHIRE: I thought there was a few times where we started chasing out of the zone, but as the game wore -- Luis Rivas had one hell of an at-bat and that set the stage, he ended up striking out, but he fought some tough pitches, and with this pitching staff, everybody talks about you are having terrible at-bats. Good pitching can make you have some terrible at-bats, and this pitching staff is really good with the Oakland A's and they pitched effectively out of the zone, so we are real proud of our guys today, they never say die, now we have got go fly back out to San Francisco, and that's probably the best fight we will ever have.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, that's all good talk when you come back 1 and 1. Then they whack you the first game here. I think everybody wanted to go play Oakland again in Oakland. So you know what? We had a good day today. Hopefully that will carry over our at-bats and give us an opportunity. We know Mr. Mulder is very tough on us, he is tough on a lot of people, so we have to go back out there tomorrow and play the game just like we did today, free and easy, get after it, nobody is really expecting us to do a hell of a lot, so that should make it easier on us. It's going to be a big game, they are all big now, but we will go back out there and take our chances. We got Radke going, he is ready, all set up, and they got Mulder, it's going to be a very good baseball game.