MLB WORLD SERIES: YANKEES v DIAMONDBACKS

November 4, 2001

Luis Gonzalez

LUIS GONZALEZ: Stepping up to the plate there, ninth inning, that's what everybody dreams about. Key situation to drive in the winning run in the World Series, one of the best relievers in all of baseball and to be honest with you, that's the first time I choked up all year, just looking in on everything and got jammed. I knew the infield was playing in, didn't have to try to hit it hard, just loop something out there and get in play. That was a dream come true for me.

LUIS GONZALEZ: The way it finished out, it could not finish in a more dramatic fashion. Womack coming up with a big hit, us being down by one run in the ninth inning; it could not have been scripted better for our ballclub. The way we have battled, fighting tooth and nail all year, up 2-0 in this series, go back down 3-2, coming over here, two tough losses in games four and five, playing the way we did yesterday, and then Game 7, the way it ended; that was a storybook ending for our team, from front to back.

LUIS GONZALEZ: Not now. All we needed was one more run than they did in the last game. This is great, for everybody in our ballclub, the whole State of Arizona, the City of Phoenix, just going around the city, the whole last couple of weeks, this whole town and the fans, the way they got behind us, it's just an unbelievable feeling. Probably not going to sleep -- didn't sleep for the last week and a half and probably won't sleep for another week and a half now.

LUIS GONZALEZ: Oh, those guys are workhorses. Those two guys have gotten a lot of, you know, a lot of the attention. There's a lot of unsung heroes on this team, I mean, Bautista, Danny and Miguel, your Dellucci's, your Colbrunns, your Counsells; everybody on this team, 1 to 25 and the 40 or more guys we used throughout the whole season, everybody has just pieced together and we battled there. There was no bitterness in our locker room. From day one our goal was to not get to the World Series but win it and believed it going into the ninth inning that we could do it. Gracy came up with a big hit, we just bunted a guy over, just the little things. You know, our team just kept battling. We were not going to give up and our fans were behind us, they were on their feet in the ninth inning and we owed it to them and to ourselves. A lot of us have been playing too long to get in this situation and let it slip away.

LUIS GONZALEZ: No. Not the way those two horses have. They deserve to be the MVPs of this World Series, the way those two guys took the ball, Bautista, Brian Anderson, those two guys picked us up when they had to. You know, we felt like we outplayed the Yankees. Our pitching staff shut down a good offensive club, to hold Jeter, Martinez, Knoblauch, all of these guys that hit .300 plus the whole year and put up big-time numbers and for our pitches to go out there, from relievers to starters to shut them down the way they did, those guys did an outstanding job.

LUIS GONZALEZ: Same thing we always say. Everyone was coming in, you've got to believe. We believe we can do it. I mean, if you looked up and down our roster, there's been a lot of guys traded, released, free agents, I mean, we've got a bunch of scratch-offs from a bunch of different ballclubs. The Cub factor is no longer a factor, by the way; there was four of us and we did win the World Series. But everybody in the bottom of our heart, we felt we could win this game. It didn't matter, I mean Rivera had been dominating us, the one guy we wanted to stay away from the whole World Series, and they got our ace reliever twice, and we got theirs the one time that it counted. So we consider it even.