NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES v DIAMONDBACKS

October 21, 2001

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: I just told him, face-to-face, how much he meant to us. I don't know if we'd get to the playoffs without him. He probably hit the hardest ball of the night right at Womack with the bases loaded. That killed us. That ball was scalded. But he's a great defender at first. Really helped with the lumber. He's a solid hitter.

BOBBY COX: Yeah, their bench is good. I don't know if it played that much of a role in this series. But we have a pretty good bench ourselves. We had a great game tonight. I thought we had our chances against Randy. You don't get a lot, but we had some. And I guess he had a lot of pitches, came out. We thought we had a shot at Kim, too.

BOBBY COX: Well, he gave up one earned run, I guess. That was a little tainted. I think he threw harder tonight, him and Maddux both threw harder, I don't know for what reason, on three days' rest. They normally don't throw that hard. But I thought he pitched tremendous baseball. I thought Maddux did, too. If we don't have the bad third inning, he probably throws a shutout for at least six, seven innings. I thought both of them were outstanding.

BOBBY COX: Well, you never know. But he struggled a little bit in the eighth. He had thrown, those are pressure innings, a lot of pressure throws. The game was really tight. He probably let Bob know. I'm sure. It's hard to take guys out like that if they have something left; that's for sure. He was probably out of gas.

BOBBY COX: I think they've got a great chance. I think they've got an outstanding -- two of the most outstanding back-to-back starters you could ever want. They've got better hitting than they've showed here, too. We had good pitching. I thought we pitched awfully good. One game got out of hand. It wasn't because we didn't pitch good, though. They have a better hitting team than it showed in this series probably.