MLB WORLD SERIES: METS v YANKEES

October 22, 2000

Bobby Valentine

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, I don't know if I needed to, but I did tell him how impressed I was that here at Yankee Stadium he struck out Derek Jeter with bases loaded in a tie game with fans on their feet thinking that Jeter had him right where he wanted him. That was as big an out as we had in yesterday's game, and that's exactly the out that he's going to build on.

BOBBY VALENTINE: It's not on my mind. It might be on yours. We're here because that closer closes. It's like an airplane ride. You never hear about the safe landings. That's what a closer's role is. You only hear about the one that the wind gets and the wing touches the ground or catches on fire when it hits the runway after 2,633,000 safe landings. I don't want to get United in trouble. (Laughter.) That airline had a bad landing. My memory's not so bad that I didn't go to him through the hardest St. Louis' order to get us a save just one series back in the playoffs. You know? We had a chance to win that game yesterday, and he got a big out. His last guy he faced was a very, very big out.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I don't know what to anticipate. You mean like throw pitches in the dirt?

BOBBY VALENTINE: I have no idea what to expect. I don't know what his game plan is to go after our hitters or after Mike. I have no idea.

BOBBY VALENTINE: It's always a contact play unless I decide it's not. That was a contact play, it just didn't work that way. Todd didn't get a break, and we know he's not the fastest runner in the world, but what are you going to do? Probably the weirdest thing about that is the ground out here is extremely soft in front of home plate and around home plate, at least it was last night. It might not be tonight with Roger pitching, I'm not sure. (Laughter.) But when that ball was hit, it was hit a lot harder than it seemed. And then all of a sudden it became a real soft hit after it hit the dirt. But contact is contact. And just so you know, in case it happens today where a guy gets doubled off on a line drive and we have to talk about base running, which I think is rather ironic, considering I went seven months explaining about the lack of speed on our team, and here in the first World Series game it's all about base running. But my belief in contact is different than some. And that is that all contact you go on. That is, you don't wait for the ball to be hit on the ground. You go as soon as there's contact with the bat. So if it's a line drive, there's a real potential for a double play. And if it's a fly ball, the runner will take a jump and then have to get back, scramble back on a fly ball to tag up. Some theories of contact is you're reading the ball off the bat down. We don't do that. We read the ball and the bat making contact, that's how we're supposed to go. I think in lieu of the -- maybe some of the things that happened prior to that, Todd just might have been a little cautious.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I don't know if everybody heard that. I've never seen one go that far down the line and start off that far foul. My thoughts were I wish it didn't happen. It was a good play by Brosius. Very often when a ball is spinning -- and, again, I think that might have had something to do with the spin the ball took out of that sandbox in front of home plate. But the balls usually that are hit and bounce high up in the air off the plate and then you see the catcher coming out and he's standing in foul territory and the batter's just standing there, very often from the dugout you hear a guy say, "Let it come fair. Don't let the catcher catch that one on the high fly right here in foul territory. Let it bounce, because maybe it's going to hit something and come fair." Because the guy's standing right there. You never see the catcher do that. You always see the catcher catch it in foul territory, because it's an instinct play. This one, Scott had a lot of time to see it, feel it. And, again, it was a good play on his part. It was a bad play on Todd's part not running. If he ran, obviously he would have picked it up in foul territory and we would have had another shot, obviously.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Yeah. If I spent my time analyzing, I couldn't have any time left for managing. So obviously. That game's over with. There are things that we could have done. There are things that they could have done, obviously, to win that game earlier. We didn't do it earlier; they didn't do it earlier. They did it late. Hats off to them. It's 1-0. Let's go play.

BOBBY VALENTINE: It's good to see Matty being consistent in talking about line-ups this time of the year. But the gig on the line-up there is just that we got everyone down. Probably the numerical choice is Bubba Trammell, we didn't go with the numbers. I think DHing is a lot like pinch hitting. Lenny Harris has 130 pinch hits in his career. I think we have guys who aren't used to DHing, being they really didn't do it very much in the interleague and they haven't done it in their career. That is Hamilton, Franco and Harris. The guy who has come off the bench with the most experience was the determining factor.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Ice bag after the game. He was hit twice by the pitch. He was hit, I think, three times by -- while he was catching. He was pretty banged up. It was one of those nights when I kind of counted my blessings that Mike didn't have to go through those twelve innings with those foul tips and balls in the dirt banging him in the first game of the World Series. He's fresh, ready to go, and that's the good news.