AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

October 6, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: I am telling you, that was an emotional last inning. I was torn whether I should go get him. I have left him out there, he has been our guy all year long, and you get to that situation, should you go get him? This is about winning, and I left him out there, I said, "He has got to get Durham out, and it was the hardest decision I have had all year, and it was very tough, but I wanted that young man out there.

RON GARDENHIRE: I think Eddie is absolutely worn out right now. That was very emotional for him. I don't know -- it's just one of those -- this is a great baseball team. They have won a lot of baseball games late in the game, they never stop playing, the Oakland A's, just like us, we never stop playing, they never stop playing. They were down 5 to 1 and you could feel something was going to happen and you wanted that first out bad. I don't know. Eddie, he got the last out.

RON GARDENHIRE: I was screaming very hard in the dugout, "Keep swinging, boys, keep adding on," very hard. I have seen this game too many times, too many times when you get a couple runs and you just say, okay, that's enough. You keep playing, you keep scoring as many times as you can and you try to get as big a lead as you can because you never know what it's going to happen, and today it proved huge.

RON GARDENHIRE: You saw that, huh? You notice we sat him down pretty quick, too. We got two other guys up there, he was just getting his work in. We talked about that earlier, when are you going to start thinking about, you know, the next round? Well, it got 5 to 1 and Rick Anderson said to me "Joe Mays really needs to throw on the side now, he needs to get the work in." I tell you what, I will kiss Rick Anderson's butt when I get back to that clubhouse.

RON GARDENHIRE: I have seen it go the other way, too. Today it worked out okay. I think if you would have went to Vegas and bet a thousand dollars that Matt LeCroy would get an infield base hit to start off a game, you could have made a lot of money, and got the high chopper, and I thought we had a pretty good chance today. Mattie is good off the bench, and Denny Hocking, he has always played well here in Oakland, he really has. And I was worried about Luis Rivas with the hamstring, had a sore hamstring. He says he is fine, but I thought if I start Luis Rivas and something happens early in the game, then we are really screwed, so my feeling is Denny plays well here, he has done well in this ballpark, start him here, and it turned out pretty good.

RON GARDENHIRE: I remember I said something on the airplane last night when we got -- we were flying, and I said, "Okay, boys, I am going to bring a bunch of extra barf bags in case anybody needs one for tomorrow's game." I promise you, my desk on there has barf bags. That's what it was like. I know what Eddie was talking about when he said he couldn't spit. I couldn't spit.

RON GARDENHIRE: I would say that's the way the game is supposed to be played in the fifth game of a series 2 to 1, great pitching matches; Mulder, goodness gracious, the guy comes back and pitches his heart out. He pitched his heart out, Radke pitched his heart out. We got to the bullpen, which has been our strength all year long, and we got some late base hits late in the game to get some big hits and knock in some runs. That's what baseball is all about. That's what a fifth game is supposed to be like. And then they come back in the bottom and they got the tying run on first and the winning run on home plate. That's baseball at its finest.

RON GARDENHIRE: I brought in Romero to face Long. I got to that situation, in my opinion, there you got a man on first, we got a one-run lead, Brad was starting to get the ball up a little bit, I thought, and my pitching coach thought, so rather than take a chance with Long hitting a two-run homer, I thought I would go to Romero, who has a nasty sinker and is very good against left-handed hitters, and, in my mind, they wouldn't pinch hit for Long, so I thought we get out of that inning, we go from there. Once we got to Tejada, it was flip a coin. I think he was 9 for 22 off of Hawk, but not this year, Hawk has been throwing a little bit different than he has in the past and he has been whipping it pretty good, so I wanted him brought in there, and we told him to go at him as hard as you can, nothing soft, and Hawk did it, threw it pretty good up in the zone.

RON GARDENHIRE: That's what he has been doing. He has been blowing it pretty good, and that was the last out.

RON GARDENHIRE: We were looking there, and believe me, I was going through every scenario possible, and I saw Myers coming up, and I thought there was a flip-flop there, but they got that taken care of. When you make a lot of moves at the end of the game, those things happen, and I saw that.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, as I said, Mr. Pohlad came in before the game and said, "If we can get him through those first two innings." And let me tell you what, he had that thought in his mind, Mr. Pohlad did, but Brad started out good and finished up good. He has been our man for a long time here. And he did it again today. He picked up our baseball team again and it was vintage Brad Radke, used all his pitches, got us through the 7th inning, and it was pretty good.