AL DIVISION SERIES: ATHLETICS v YANKEES

October 11, 2001

Derek Jeter

DEREK JETER: Well, he's kind of a quiet guy. He keeps to himself a little bit. I think initially at the beginning of the year, he was a little more quiet than he is now. I think coming to a new team, it took him a little while to adjust. He's a little more vocal now but he keeps to himself. He's always doing his crossword puzzles and reading and doing all that stuff, but that's what you expect from a Stanford guy. (Laughter.)

DEREK JETER: Well, he's played well. He's really gotten a lot better, especially defensively at second base, because, you know, people, I think they don't realize sometimes that when you go to the other side of the bat -- I go over there just to take ground balls, everything is different. The color of the grass is opposite; turning double plays as opposed to looking at the runners; you can't see them. He's improved a lot. And coming in yesterday, especially in a post-season game and having that type of success, he's enjoys the game, is not afraid to fail and even when he does fail -- he got thrown out, so the next time he'll run again. He's an aggressive player and I expect him just to only get better.

DEREK JETER: Why, you want me to start some stuff here? (Laughter.) I can come up with some controversial stuff if you want me to. I came up, this is all I've known. It's not like I've come from another team coming to New York. I knew what to expect in my first year coming up in '95, especially being around in the post-season and seeing the media attention and all of the questions that are asked. And I was sort of an outsider looking in because I was not on the roster, so I think I learned a great deal from watching other guys my first year. I always watch what I say; it's not just here, it's everywhere. But if I think of something controversial, I'll come find you.

DEREK JETER: No. You get to post-season, more often than not, all of the good teams have good pitchers, and good pitching is going to beat good hitting most of the time. It's not really a home-run hitting contest, even though it was last night for Oakland. Usually you're trying to scrap for some runs. Some nights the pitchers are going to shut you down even if you are a good hitter. We've been behind before. We've come back. You all expect us to do it. Even in the ninth inning, we felt as though we were going to come back, but it didn't happen. That's just one game. Those type of things happen. We've been shut down before.

DEREK JETER: Well, one thing, since I've been here, we've been winning. So there's really not much controversy you can start when the team wins most of the time. You know, I learned a lot from Don Mattingly, the way he handled the press when he was here. I had a chance to watch him. Mr. Torre is pretty good the media. I've heard from a lot of people that he handles New York better than any other manager that's been here, I've learned a lot from watching.

DEREK JETER: Well, losing is not easy any time. You want to go out, you want to play well. The thing is, when you are in the post-season, especially when you are in a short series, you don't have the luxury of saying, "Well, this game doesn't really make a difference. If we lose, we'll come back tomorrow." You've got to take every game like it's the fifth game or the seventh game. We've lost games before. We've come back, like you've said, but we have to go out ready to play every day. But any time you've done something in the past, you feel as though you can do it again.

DEREK JETER: When you're in a situation now, you try not to think about it because you worry about the task at hand and that's winning. You don't worry about what may happen and this may be his last game. Hopefully, it's not his last game at Yankee Stadium. Paul has been here since, what, '92 was his first year or '93 -- one of them. That was my first year in spring training. So he's been a mainstay here in right field. The fans love him. He plays hard. He's very intense; you can tell by the way he reacts when he gets out at the plate. He expects a lot out of himself and I'm sure the team is going to miss him, whenever he decides to hang it up, and I'm sure the fans will, as well.

DEREK JETER: Yeah, of course. Like I said before, you take every game like it's important, but 0-2, that's the worst scenario you can be in. And right now the best-case scenario is be 1-1 and go out to Oakland. So this is definitely a must-win.

DEREK JETER: You're writing a book on Mussina? (Laughter.) It's pretty much all business. He goes out there and he pitches. He does his job. He's pretty focused, but I haven't got to the point where I'm joking around with him yet.

DEREK JETER: He's probably been our best pitcher over the last few weeks of the season. He's really been pitching well and throwing basically a lot of strikes and been fooling a lot of people. I don't want to jinx him, but we expect him to go out there and pitch well for us because he's been doing it for the most part, the entire season. The few times he lost, we didn't score very many runs for him, so hopefully we can go out there and give him a little run support to work with.

DEREK JETER: He's very fun to watch. I don't enjoy watching him when we're playing against him. But I think he's really gotten a little more consistent than I think he was the first couple of years. Obviously he has a great deal of power. He is a power hitter, I think. Obviously, hitting 30 home runs. He's a home run threat every time he comes up. Defensively, he's gotten better than his first couple of years and I think he's only going to continue to improve. Anymore Mussina questions? (Laughter.)