NL DIVISION SERIES: BRAVES v ASTROS

October 10, 2001

Tom Glavine

TOM GLAVINE: It's great. That's probably an understatement. You know, you come in to a playoff series on the road and I think you're hoping to get a split and go home and take advantage of your two games at home. We were fortunate to get two games here on the road and now go home needing one win with two games at home so you can't ask for a better situation. Now it's up to us to go home and take advantage of it.

TOM GLAVINE: You know, in that situation, first and third, one on, I'm obviously looking to try to get a double play ball. Really, you know, I didn't really care that I got behind him 3-0. You know, it was still a situation that I-- if I walked him, the double play was still in order. Obviously, probably a little bit tougher with Biggio, as well as he runs, to double him up. I really, at that point in time, didn't really care. I just kind of obviously take the assumption that he's going to take 3-0, go 3-1, then was able to make a great pitch on 3-1 and, you know, a changeup 3-2 that he swung over the top of. You know, really, like I said, I was so locked into trying to get a double play ball there, that once I got a strikeout, it was like, "Okay, I have to regroup," because I had one more hitter, and that was Biggio. It was a turning point in the game. Obviously I probably caught a break with Ausmus' ball that he hit so hard that it didn't have a chance to get up and get out. But, I mean, that's baseball. It's a game of inches. I got a break that ball didn't go out and I was able to take advantage of it and not give up any runs because of it.

TOM GLAVINE: No, I didn't know.

TOM GLAVINE: No, I don't know, so...

TOM GLAVINE: 3-0 I threw a fastball, I guess pretty much down the middle. 3-1 was a fastball away. Then 3-2 was a changeup that was down the middle but it sunk and he just kind of swung over the top of it.

TOM GLAVINE: To Truby?

TOM GLAVINE: I, you know, I think it was. I never gave it a second thought. You know, I mean generally you throw a 3-0 pitch that's anywhere close to the plate and they're going to call it a strike. It's been happening for as long as I've been playing. So it wasn't like if it wasn't a strike, it wasn't like it was blatantly off the plate. I never gave it a second thought, so...

TOM GLAVINE: Yeah, I mean once they take Mlicki out, I think it's pretty evident that that's the situation they're trying to take advantage of and do something with. You know, I mean, certainly you can go through the argument of do you leave Mlicki in there or don't you? He threw five good innings and had them in a situation where they had a chance to win a ball game. As much as you might try and save certain hitters for certain situations and whatever, you don't know if you're going to get that situation again. Obviously right there it presented itself, and I think they were trying to take advantage of it obviously to either get a run and get back in the game and tie it or have a big inning and take the lead. Certainly, with their bullpen, I mean they've got a solid bullpen. You know, I'm sure there's no hesitation in a tight ball game like that to turn it over to the bullpen knowing they're going to give you three, four, solid innings. And they did today.

TOM GLAVINE: Personally, I don't -- no. Can't speak for everybody, but, you know, I think that we've been in a situation against these guys where seemingly we've done everything we needed to do and everything's gone our way and we've won some series against these guys. But I think that in playoff situations, what's happened in the past, you kind of throw it out the window. If you believe in a law of averages, then you got to believe sooner or later things are going to go right for these guys but you don't know if it's going to be this year or somewhere down the road. You don't take that stuff for granted. The best thing we can do if we do have a psychological advantage in this series is to go out there, play good baseball, force them to make plays and to do things and then see if they do it. If they don't, we got to take advantage of them. And yesterday we did. You know, Lugo made the error and we took advantage of that. Today, we just took advantage of being able to go out there and play good defense and turn some big double plays when we had to.