NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v BRAVES

October 11, 1999

John Rocker

JOHN ROCKER: Yeah, I definitely think it has. A guy my age, I guess, coming into a team like this, a situation like this, where day-in and day-out, you're expected to win, and, really, demanded to win, by the fans, as much as anybody: Ourselves, the guys on the team and stuff. I think with each outing over the course of this year, and especially last year, as well, with each good outing, my confidence would kind of build up a little bit, get a little stronger. And I guess that was kind of the culmination in Friday night's game, coming into a situation like that, looking to go down 2-1 to Astros, and come back to win Saturday and Sunday, against Reynolds, who shuts us down in Game 1, and Lima, a 20-game winner. It was going to be a uphill battle. To squeeze out that little narrow opening we got and come through like that, and give our team a chance to win, it was a big boost; that's what I'm paid to do. But the odds of getting out of a situation like that in front of 50,000 opposing fans and a good team like that is slim to none. When you go do that and help your team win, it's a big confidence booster.

JOHN ROCKER: Yeah, you kind of have to look at it in a different perspective. You can't really go up there and think: "I'm going to win these fans over, they're going to be a fan of me, because I'm a good player." If you're wearing a different uniform, they're not going to like you, and they are going to swear at you and talk about your family, and it's got to be -- I guess you have to treat it as a motivating tool. It doesn't bother me a bit. They can say whatever they want to. I was getting heckled and jeered at as bad as I've ever gotten the last time we were up there, and after talking the trash in the paper, but it doesn't bother me at all. It's just like Brian said that he gets a little more motivated when he's in a visiting park and has all the adversity to put up with the fans. I take it as a motivating tool. But it's as bad there as it is anywhere else. And it's the kind of thing that does get under your skin and the good athletes, the guys that are driven by stuff like that, I think it's -- the fans think it's demoralizing tool to heckle you and stuff like that, but the guys that are Big League ballplayers, that are professional athletes that are the really driven kind of athletes who are the majority of the people who make it to this level. They use that as a kind of tool to motivate themselves not to demoralize themselves.

JOHN ROCKER: Yeah, there's a few. Exactly which ones I should voice, I'm not really sure. Well, I look at the Mets team, and 7 of their 9 hitters are.300 hitters. They have the best infield in the history of the game, great bullpen, veteran starting pitching. I'm really shocked to see how they had to squeak into the playoffs with a one-game playoff against the Reds to even get here. At least, I thought they should beat us out for the division, just looking on paper, at talent, theirs versus ours. They went out, made a lot of acquisitions off season, and before the trading deadline. And for us to still come out and beat them 9 out of 12 games, I don't see how Bobby Valentine could say a word. We don't know what's going to happen in this series. There's been many, many series in football, baseball, whatever sport you want to look at, where one team seems to dominate the other team during the regular season, and the team that's been dominated comes out when all the chips are down in the postseason and steps it up and kind of undoes all those defeats they received in the regular season. That may happen, who knows. But we have a lot of respect for the Mets because even though we did beat them 9 out of 12 games, all those games were hard-fought games, and 2-1 victories, 3-2 victories, stuff like that. But I think just as well as we give them respect, I don't think Bobby Valentine has much to pay for us.

JOHN ROCKER: I wouldn't really say that, because not really up until -- not really up until the trade deadline, I was still hearing rumors of getting this close or getting that close. I really thought I was doing a pretty good job. I think if I'd been able to hold on, I guess, right at the end of the first half and make the All-Star Team, I had a couple of bad games, and it cost me an All-Star Game selection, perhaps. I'm not really sure. I think if I'd actually been able to make the All-Star Team, that would have, in my mind, solidified me as the closer. But when you're with a team like this, you know, who has to win consistently every single month out of the year, you get a bad month where you lose 15 out of 25 games or whatever, and you drop out of first place. Immediately the front office, the manager, whoever, they're going to want to look for somebody to step up and take the ball and get you back on the winning track. So it really -- really at no point did I really feel 100 percent comfortable. No matter what I do now, I'm going to be the closer. In August, even after I'd saved probably 25 games and had good numbers, if I'd blown 6 straight saves in August, I think they would be looking around for somebody to carry them in September.

JOHN ROCKER: Yeah, I think maybe all bullpen is kind of like a unit of the entire team. The team as a whole in the mid-season rallied around each other to find nitpicky things to do, scratch and claw to come up with runs and games. I think the bullpen has been the same way; carry was a huge loss. His good numbers, his 30 saves, his good ERA, whatever he was going to be doing this year. I don't know if he would be the closer or whatever. But losing an arm like his out of the bullpen was a big loss. And Rudy, he was as solid as a set-up guy as there is in the Big Leagues, and have him go down with a season-ending injury was tough to us. But Mulholland came on, and he's kind of the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to pitching: Start and close and setting up, middle relief, whatever; he goes out and gives you quality innings every time out. I don't know where we'd be without him. And, of course, Mike Remlinger is having a career year with the numbers he's put up. Without those two guys, I think we would kind of be where the Mets ended up, and maybe scrapping for a wild card.

JOHN ROCKER: I don't think it's really any more motivating. We're going to want to beat the Mets, as bad as we possibly can, whether Bobby Valentine thinks we're a good team or not. It's not like I'm going to say or Chipper is going to say or whatever that Bobby Valentine doesn't like me; I'm going to go out and hit a home run to show him. Chip is going to go out and hit home runs and drive home runs in, no matter what the opposing manager says about him. I'm going to go out and strike out the other side no matter what the opposing manager says. You have to sit back and wonder how you can play a team like you played all year, and you might not like us, you might think you can beat us. I mean, every team when you go into a series always thinks they can beat the other team. They never go in and say: "We can't beat them, they're too good." But at least have respect for the other team. They are a good team, we think we can beat them. But yes, we're going to beat them, but I just don't really see that kind of an attitude at all.

JOHN ROCKER: I hope I do, because I don't think I can keep up with this pace for however many more years I've got left in me. I think if I keep up with the frantic pace I go now, I think I'll probably die young, which might not be a bad thing. But I don't know, a lot of guys I've talked to over the years said I used to be just like you, first two or three years of my career, and I'd watch like Norm Charlton said the same thing, he said: "I was exactly like you when I was 23 years old." And then I watched Norm pitch, he was more mellow in the way he dealt with things. I'll calm down or burn out trying, I guess.

JOHN ROCKER: To tell you the truth, I know you can look at it two ways, I guess. There's always pressure. Us, the Yankees, Cleveland, the teams who get here a lot. And we certainly don't want to be known as the youngest as the "Buffalo Bills" of the 90's, when get the four straight Super Bowls or lose them all. We've been in the Series four straight years, and only have one World Championship to show for it. There's a little pressure, if you look at it, the critics' viewpoint of it. But another way of looking at it is we've gotten this far without 75 home runs and 250 RBI's from Andres and Javy, and it's -- I've told guys all year, I don't know how we won 103 games. We have a lot of guys that do a lot of little things right to give us victories. So you can look at it like we're where we are despite all the stuff we've overcome, and winning is just kind of a bonus, because the beginning of the year I know we were picked to win the east, and once all the injuries set in, people said: "Look at the Mets team"; "Look at the Reds team"; "Look at Houston"; we don't know if the Braves are going to be there in the end, but we are. I think a lot of people have been doubting us from the beginning, and in past years, people have just been penciling us into the World Series back in May. So I don't think we really got that treatment this year. I think we don't have quite as much to prove.