NL DIVISION SERIES: CARDINALS v DIAMONDBACKS

October 9, 2001

Steve Finley

STEVE FINLEY: From the beginning of the game, watching Curt from centerfield, I had a real good feeling we were going to win that game. I had a good feeling if we put at least a run on the board with his stuff, I think it would have a chance to be lights out.

STEVE FINLEY: First off, he is one of the most prepared pitchers I've ever played behind. He was hitting his spots, he was turning it up a notch when he needed to.

He was on top of his game. When Curt is like that, you know, as offense you just need to put up a couple of runs and it's game over.

STEVE FINLEY: Yes. I had faith in myself the second half of the season. I would put the numbers up that I needed to to help the club win. You know, I stuck to my guns and stuck to my faith that that would happen. Bob kept running me out there. And sure enough, I came around.

STEVE FINLEY: Well, this last year, it had to do with getting hit in the wrist in September. It put a severe bone bruise and it hurt all winter and the first part of the season. And physically I just wasn't able to do what I've been doing the last few years and it was a mental struggle to kind of readjust my swing to not so much hit home runs, really not thinking about driving the ball as much, but more thinking about line drives. It took a while to make that mental adjustment. But once I did, the base hits started coming.

STEVE FINLEY: Well, when we had the first game back here, when we did a ceremony for all the victims in New York and the tragedy and we had the Phoenix Fire Department out here and the police department, we met out on the field and they gave us hats, and I felt this was a good enough opportunity to show my support for them and wear this hat tonight.

STEVE FINLEY: Anytime in any series, and especially in a short series, you can get that first game, it's kind of a momentum swinger and we've got two big horses and one of them won the game for us tonight, and another we've got going tomorrow tonight. I think this game has been great at focusing pitch to pitch and at-bat to at-bat and this game is over with. And we're going to put it behind us and come out tomorrow with the same focus and hopefully get the same result.

STEVE FINLEY: I think post-season is definitely experience. You know how to handle the situations and the post-season is just concentrating one at-bat at a time, one pitch at a time, and one out at a time. When you learn to focus and really focus on that aspect alone, you take the nervousness out of it, and you're able to focus on the task at hand. And we've got a lot of guys on this team that have the experience. And you know experience shows in games like tonight.