NL DIVISION SERIES: GIANTS v BRAVES

October 2, 2002

Rich Aurilia

RICH AURILIA: Not really, the last three or four weeks we have been getting out on top. We've been playing some pretty good baseball. I don't think it was a matter of us just being aggressive. I think we just hit his mistakes that he made up in the zone. We had a couple big hits with guys in scoring position. But was I surprised we jumped on them early? No. We've been doing that the past few weeks or so.

RICH AURILIA: It's been huge for us this year. Barry, for anybody to walk 198 times in a season, is ridiculous. To have a guy hitting behind him, really, was kind of an afterthought, I think it's really special. He has had a fantastic year for us and he's excited to be back in the post-season and today he showed what he's showing us all year. If you watched us play all season, that's what he has done for us. He had some key hits today and he caught a good game behind the plate.

RICH AURILIA: I think the more important thing was, we've won a game here in Atlanta. Our track record has not really been too good here the last few years. We won the first Game 2 years ago in 2000 and that did not work out for us. It's nice to go out and beat a quality pitcher like Tom Glavine. We've been facing quality pitching the last four weeks of the season, playing a lot of playoff-caliber type games, and to go out today and beat him in their ballpark in Game 1 of the series was a pretty big win for us.

RICH AURILIA: We haven't seen him in a while. We faced him early in the season, I think in April or May. He's been on a pretty good stretch here recently. We have to keep our same approach. Not be too aggressive, but at the same time, try to take advantage of mistakes that are made. He's a quality pitcher, just like they all are, and they pretty much I think all kind of have the same philosophy about pitching. Hopefully we'll come out and get on top early tomorrow.

RICH AURILIA: "God, please don't make it come back to haunt us." You know, a couple pitches later, Javy Lopez hit a home run and I don't know if it was the next hitter or hitter after that, I think Benito would have ran through that wall to catch that pop-up. I think he actually knocked somebody in the face over there in the camera pit. We were fortunate enough that we had a big enough lead that it did not really come back and hurt us too much.

RICH AURILIA: I think it was important for us in a sense that we had not played up to our potential as a team and as individuals until about the last four weeks of the season. We never had anybody hitting at one time. We never had all of the pitchers throwing well at one time. The last four weeks, the month of September, we put it all together, and for us to come into the post-season with eight straight wins, against some quality pitching, too -- we beat Miller, Roy Oswald down the stretch in L.A., we had some good games. It was important for us to come in on a good note, and hopefully we can carry that on through the series.