AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

October 5, 2002

Eric Milton

ERIC MILTON: It's always important to any pitcher. You get strike 1 and you are ahead and you can go from there. It's always important to get strike 1, it's the best pitch in baseball.

ERIC MILTON: When you are scoring runs at the pace we were, 7-run inning, you can't help but get a little adrenaline yourself. Even though I am not up there hitting, it's nice to see the guys hitting and running around the bases, so I try to stay loose, and when you get out there, the next inning you got to be ready for the next hitting, and that's what I did.

ERIC MILTON: I mean, it was very important to get a zero. After I came in after the top of the first, Gardy and Rick Anderson looked at each other and said "That's a zero." We haven't seen many of them. But it was a zero, and that was big, to get out of that inning, you know, unscathed. But the play Mientkiewicz made was great, and I am just glad I was able to to get over there to cover.

ERIC MILTON: He might have been. I wasn't watching. I just told him "Great play," you know, as always. He has been making great plays all year, so it was just another great play. The key for me was us tying it up after I gave that two-run homer, came back, tied the game up 2-2, and that kind of eased my mind and I could kind of put that homerun out of my mind and go on.

ERIC MILTON: I never think of getting down. Again, you can try and get out of that inning with just minimal damage and just the two runs. Again, the big key was coming back in and tying the game up, because I would have been kicking myself the rest of the game for that homerun, but scoring those two runs and tying the game up kind of put that out of my mind, put me at ease.

ERIC MILTON: Obviously, the adrenaline is flowing when you have a record crowd as we did. The fans were really into the game, and you couldn't ask for much more. It definitely helps you out out there and gets your adrenaline going.

ERIC MILTON: You know, I have been feeling good, feeling good my last couple starts, and healthy, the knee is healthy and everything. Everything has been going good, so I stayed aggressive, challenged them and, you know, when you got the good fastball, you got to be able to locate it, and that's what I did is locate it in and out.

ERIC MILTON: I think if you can't have determination today, you really shouldn't be out there, because, you know, if not for a win today, there would be no tomorrow, and, you know, that's how I had to go out there, with that mind-set. This could have been our last game of the season, but now we are going to game 5.