AL DIVISION SERIES: ATHLETICS v YANKEES

October 10, 2001

Art Howe

ART HOWE: Outstanding. He made great pitches all night long. Pitched out of some tough situations, and that's really the reason we felt real comfortable giving him the ball the first game of the series. He's pitched like that most of the season, great competitor, and I'm just happy for him.

ART HOWE: I hope it turns out different, but we learned a valuable lesson last year. Just because we won the first game doesn't mean the series is over by any means. We have to go out and continue to play solid ball to try to get this thing in our favor. Like I said it was the same score, too. We just got scared -- 5-3, I'm pretty sure we won that first one. But we had to win one here to have a shot at winning the series. We got one tonight and hopefully we can play well again tomorrow.

ART HOWE: Huge. Johnny had a big night. I'm so happy for him. It's his first opportunity in post-season. Got off to a whale of a start. And that's what he can do for us; he can make things happen, and that's what he did tonight all night long, getting some big hits, stealing some bases and scoring some runs.

ART HOWE: You know, we try to keep a close eye on our starters, 110, to 120. There were so many delays it seemed like, during this game. He had to wait around a lot of times and Soriano was 2-for-2 off of him and Knoblauch had knocked in the only run off of him. Mecir was fresh in the bullpen and he's been doing a great job for us. I felt like, we've got a leg up on this game, so let's give it to the pen.

ART HOWE: He had a great game tonight, obviously, two home runs, and he plays a solid left field for us. As you said he's played all three outfield positions for us and played them all extremely well. He seems to always be there when we need him.

ART HOWE: For me, that's vintage Izzy. He threw the ball the way he's capable of tonight. We just hope he continues to throw it the rest of the way like that. He was outstanding, to say the least.

ART HOWE: For Johnny, it put him in a position where he's comfortable. He really likes to play centerfield, and all of a sudden, offensively, he started getting his bat going and maybe it had something to do with it, maybe it didn't. But it's ironic that that's when he did start hitting. Terrence, moving over to right, did a great job of shutting down the running game of our opponents, any kind of base hit to right; he's got a nice throwing arm. So we were getting out of some games; base hits to right field, with Terrence over there, that eliminated that. Once we got Dye, the gold-glover, we had the luxury of moving Terrence to left, we had the luxury of some nice throwing arms and we could cover some ground.

ART HOWE: That was real big. I mean, he's been doing it all year long. Jason has just been a phenomenal hitter. It was a nice feeling, to see that. That was a big insurance run at the time, and he didn't miss it, I tell you; he got all of it.