MLB WORLD SERIES: PADRES v YANKEES

October 21, 1998

Joe Torre

JOE TORRE: I thought about '95, Game 5 with the 1-0 score we had up there. He can match the best of them. And I thought Kevin Brown pitched a very courageous game tonight, but as soon as I saw the first pitch he threw I knew we were in great shape. He let it go, trusted his stuff. And Joe Girardi behind the plate is a good security blanket for him.

JOE TORRE: I didn't buy into that until you get into it. We won 114 games, and it would have been, in its own right a wonderful accomplishment, 114 wins, and then you get into the postseason, you know you have to get through the first round, and the second round and say I'm going to enjoy the World Series, the more you win, the more everybody expects you to win. And the thing that concerned me the most was not winning the World Series, and having someone look down their nose at what we accomplished this year. So I think that's where the pressure came from.

JOE TORRE: When I was out there after the game was over, just about every player came up and said thank you to me. They said it before I said it. That knocked me off my stilts a little bit, that they thanked me for this. I've never been around a more courageous group and more determined group. Again, not to take anything away from '96, because we were terrific for a different reason, we had a lot of magical stuff go on. But to have the record going during the course of the year, and to continue playing well and never taking a day off, that to me was a hell of an indication that we were special.

JOE TORRE: Well, it's not supposed to, I guess. The whole -- and I noticed that something -- a revelation for me in the Texas series was that we were very tense. I just sensed that this ballclub was tense, and yet we played quality baseball. That said to me, wow, we acknowledge the fact that we're having -- we're a little tight, but we can still play baseball, and I think that was something that doesn't normally work, but I'm just, right now I'm not necessarily stunned, but I am in a little bit of a daze.

JOE TORRE: I was looking forward to a 10-0 game tonight, but Kevin Brown wouldn't be a part of it. And the thing I'm most proud of is this guy, right down here, Andy Pettitte, with all the questions that have been asked about him, I keep going back to '96 and what he accomplished in '96, and know there's an enormous heart there, and what's been going on in his life, to go out there and match Kevin pitch for pitch in front of these frantic fans, it just was appropriate that we win a game like this, after the high scoring games, and then scoring to come back last night, and just to show that we're a multi-talented club.

JOE TORRE: Well, I haven't -- I only have about 40 years of history. It's the best club I've ever been around. '27 Yankees, they may be a better club, but we had the best record. To me, that was the standard that I was looking to pass, because the Yankees -- more important to have a Yankee record than anything else. I look at the -- when you look at the clubs, and we talked about it before, you look at the Oakland A clubs that won a few World Championships in a row, and the Cincinnati club that kept coming at you, and that '76 team was always a standard for me, I think we have better pitching than they have, but we have to take a backseat to no one in my lifetime.