AL DIVISION SERIES: RANGERS v YANKEES

October 5, 1999

Johny Oates

JOHNNY OATES: I think the first thing is both teams play in the same weather. And I think that we've talked to pitchers and Aaron Sele is also a feel-type pitcher and pitchers who are not power pitchers and feel it becomes a bigger factor than someone who just stands out and throws hard. We'll just see how Aaron goes. Certainly the weather will have an impact on that. It has had an impact on Rafael. When he got up this morning, his knee was arthritic, it was giving him trouble. That's the reason he's the DH tonight. How long will Aaron go? As long as he's getting people out.

JOHNNY OATES: Well, as we said yesterday, I think there's a perception that we need to pitch better. If you look at the numbers, what we need to do is hit better. We're going to try to work the count a little bit, maybe to be a little bit patient, maybe swing at our pitch, maybe not swing at their pitches, earning the count. Really, we haven't had much less offense, we haven't had a whole lot of scoring opportunities. We need to have more base runners, that's one of our strengths, our offense. And one run every ball game is not going to get it done. We have to score more runs but generate more opportunity to score those runs.

JOHNNY OATES: I think that you look at Pudge every day that we have the opportunity to. I think from a national standpoint, you certainly get to see his offensive numbers, but you don't get to see everything he does for a ballclub. You sit in the dugout and watch other teams and how they react. They may take one less footstep lead at first base and not be able to go to third on a base hit. Maybe the same shorter lead at second because he's picked off three or four guys on second and you're not able to score on a base hit, the number of runners he's picked off. I may be mistaken, I know we've had two passed balls all year. I'm not sure if either one is his. If so, maybe one of them. You realize the number of innings he's caught, and to have only at most one passed ball all year is concentration. The things he does for us defensively, I don't think there's anyone in baseball right now that can match that. And his offensive numbers will speak for themselves. 199 hits, 100-plus runs, 100-plus RBIs, most homeruns in American League ever by a catcher. It's just been a phenomenal year for Pudge.

JOHNNY OATES: I think the first thing, we would have expected Rafael to play more first base. But because of the couple of knee surgeries he has had, he's had to start only a few games at first base, but none of the other things that he has done has really been a surprise. You look at Rafael, he may be one of the best kept secrets in all of baseball in the fact that maybe the '90s was not the year -- or not the decade to be a first baseman in the early part of the decade you had Frank Thomas in American League, and then Mo Vaughn came on the scene. But you look at what Rafael has done in the '90s, number of games played, the average homeruns per year, the RBIs per year, pretty consistent with what he did this year. The only thing is that he jumped his batting average and on-base percentage up from what he normally does. Part of that had to do with the line-up he was hitting in. He had a lot of people on base in front of him and a lot of protection behind him. He has had an unbelievable offensive year for us, a nice addition to our ballclub.

JOHNNY OATES: Premiere person and premiere baseball player. We talk a lot about the opportunity that we have as opposed to the obstacles in front of us, and we let John share with us what it's like to be on the other side of that obstacle. He's one of the few players in our clubhouse that has been able to enjoy that final victory. He's one of the premiere closers in the game, not only this year, with his 43 saves, but what he has done in his career. I believe he's four short of 300 total. And John is a unique individual in the fact that not only is he a good leader on our ballclub, especially in the bullpen, he's one of those guys that expects no special treatment. If I wanted him to pitch in a blowout game, he's well-prepared for that. If I wanted him to pitch four days in a row, he's well-prepared for that. If I wanted him to pitch two winnings in one night, he's well-prepared for that. That is the only thing a manager can ask of a closer.

JOHN OATES: Honestly, I wouldn't mind an all-Texas series. That would guarantee that we were there. Honestly, what I thought of more than an all-Texas series has been a New York -- it would have to be the Mets, Rangers series. Because maybe Spurs, Knicks, stars, Sabres, maybe we can make it three.

JOHN OATES: No. I tell you, this ballclub in the other dugout, they've got an outstanding ballclub and they've matched up very, very well, to say the least, against us in the last couple years. To say that we don't have our hands full here, like we would if we'd be facing Pedro, would be a false statement. We know that we've got our hands full and more over the next couple of nights. We'll just see how things work out.

JOHN OATES: I won't speak specifically for Darryl, but in general, there are -- people who know me, I use that term a lot. There is something to be said for a presence. Whether he's on your team, whether he's on someone else's team. You always know your player's better than someone else, but I think there's a great deal to be said for presence. When I played with the Yankees, Reggie Jackson had a presence. Regardless of what inning he came to at bat, there was a presence. Pete Rose, there was a presence when he walked on the field. Some of the guys I played with, Steve Carlton, when he went to the mound, there was a presence about him that you knew he was going to get the job done. And evidently, from what Joe has said, when he sends Darryl into a ball game, he has that presence that his teammates know that he's going to come through and do something good for them.

JOHN OATES: Just so you'll know, the reason my fist is closed is so I do not answer the question before it's asked a second time because I have a tough time doing that, and it failed. I've never really given a lot of thought to see if there's a parallel there. But I think it happens in sports that you go through cycles, particularly ours, a couple years ago it was Seattle. We couldn't do anything right against Seattle. And right now for us it's the New York Yankees. Here we are three or four years in the playoffs, and in the same situation. And since the fifth inning of Game 1, we haven't done very much. And I'm a firm believer that the world does turn. Why? I don't know. When, I don't know. And I'm just hopeful that it's this year.

JOHN OATES: As a visitor early in my career, I disliked coming to New York very, very much. In fact, so much I said that that is one place I would never play. '80 and '81 I was fortunate enough to be a member of the New York Yankees and I would not trade those almost two full years for anything. It's a very, very special place, a special city to play in as a home player, a very tough place to play as a visiting player. I was just talking yesterday, some almost 27 years ago I took my first at-bat in this place as a rookie with the Orioles standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium. You know, Detroit, scored right away, people asked me about it. No big deal. They're talking about Fenway, I don't know. To me, it doesn't seem like a big deal. Yankee Stadium, that's a big deal. Yankee Stadium is -- I don't know -- maybe it's the first, as a young kid, it was the only ballpark I knew anything about. And, a lot of very special people played baseball here.

JOHN OATES: I think from a point that Mike had such an outstanding year for us, he got a lot of important outs in the sixth and seventh inning for us, what we'll have now is Jeff Fassero will be the second left-hander in the bullpen. I'm looking at it that from a lone-reliever standpoint, I have a left-hander now who can go long, whereas before I had two left-handers who had to go short and match up. I'm hoping that by having Jeff out there that even though we don't have a left-handed starter, we have that guy that can come in, should we have to have somebody, and maybe pitch two or three innings for us which we did not have before. Then turn it over to our three right-handers, Crabtree, Zimmerman, and Wetteland, who have done very well against left-handers this year.

JOHN OATES: I think first of all, is there's all kinds of definitions of leadership. Mine is to be a leader, you have to have followers. There's a lot of leaders out there that only have two followers. In our clubhouse, Rafael Palmeiro has all players following him. We have a very bilingual ballclub. He can speak to everyone in there. And I think what he has done very quietly this year has become a very quiet leader because people in there do follow him. And you like to have a guy like that, who wants to play every day, be in the action every day, puts up good numbers. And the old statement, "You can talk the talk, you can walk the walk, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks."

JOHN OATES: I think that would be a question better suited to ask Rafael, because he and I visited often about his knee, about playing a little bit of first base here and there. We certainly wanted to make sure when we went to the National League parks he was able to play first base. The best way I can answer that question is any time you play as many games as he has, the last ten years in the '90s, if you're not really involved in baseball and you ask, you know, how many games comparing he and Cal Ripken, who played the most games in the '90s, you might miss that question. And to play that many games, you have to have a high-pain threshold and love to play the game of baseball.