AL DIVISION SERIES: INDIANS v MARINERS

October 9, 2001

Ellis Burks

Marty Cordova

ELLIS BURKS: Well, that definitely helps. Anytime you can be healthy a hundred percent and go out and play ball, you're definitely going to have a better game. The last couple of weeks of the season I had the knees drained a couple of times. But they feel good now and I'm swinging the bat well, and hopefully I can continue to do so.

ELLIS BURKS: I guess I pitched in with some good teams. I'm not sure. It's one of those fortunate things that you happen to get on good teams and be with a great organization. And just have fun with it. And we've got a great bunch of guys on this club that have been on a lot of winning teams, and it's one of those good things that we played well this year, and we're here, and I think we're supposed to be here.

ELLIS BURKS: Well, you can't take anything away from the Mariners or Oakland, who won 102 games, and the Yankees winning 4 out of 5 World Series. But we definitely have a good track record, winning 6 out of the last 7 years over at Cleveland. And last year was a let down. We have a great middle infield, outfield, bullpens, so we deserve to be here as well.

ELLIS BURKS: It was a big inning for us. Anytime you can score three runs against these guys is definitely a plus. But to talk about it, we got Robbie on, Juan got a broken bat hit over Boone's hit. And I hit a ball to David Bell that he dove after and I beat it out. Travis came out with a big hit. And Marty Cordova came up with a great hit with the bases loaded. Anytime you have the middle or bottom part of your line-up swinging well and putting the ball in play like we did today you're going to come out with a win. Everybody was focused on the top of the line-up and the middle.

MARTY CORDOVA: Well, I think when Bartolo, when he first starts, he starts a little slow. But first, second inning, he did good, and we can tell once he settles in the first, 2nd, 3rd inning. The 7th, 8th inning, he's throwing fast. And if you can get him through the first couple of innings, he's going to definitely have a good chance to win the game late.

ELLIS BURKS: I think that anytime -- there was a lot of concern about Bartolo after his last start in Kansas City. And he told us on the flight before that, just give me a couple of runs, and I'll do the job this time. And he came out and did a great job for us, overpowering -- it seemed like he was just overmatching those guys the whole day today.

MARTY CORDOVA: I don't know if that's part of his strategy, I think he starts to throw the ball by you and not walk anybody. He threw a lot of strikes, and didn't walk anybody, that's a key to his success. He is not going to give up a lot of hits. If he doesn't put guys on bases, he'll be fine. And he did exactly what he wanted to do. He's worried about getting people out, throwing the ball as hard as he can.

MARTY CORDOVA: Everybody didn't play the last few games. Some of our guys played a few innings and got out of the game. This was a great game. Jim Thome made a great play, got us out of the inning. Omar made some nice plays. And the pitching was great. We got some timely hits. We couldn't have asked for a better game than we played today. This is how we need to play games to win.

ELLIS BURKS: Well, my only concern in the middle of the season is when I got my thumb broken in Houston and I was out for a number of games then. And of course once I came back, I came back -- I thought I was ready, but I wasn't. I came back a bit too soon and I struggled quite a bit. But once I got healthy, things started working out. The knees felt good, the thumb felt good. So the last couple of weeks it's been great.

MARTY CORDOVA: I was trying to make a team, and playing in the postseason feels great. I don't feel I was nervous up there. I felt like I was trying to get runners in and try to help this team win. Maybe I might have been a little anxious at my first at bat, but after the game starts you get the jitters out of the way, and go about doing your job the way you know how to do it.

ELLIS BURKS: Anytime you can come into a visiting park and take Game 1, there's always an advantage for the team. We came into Seattle here today, and pretty much -- it could go either way there, but Freddy Garcia pitched an excellent game. And we got a few hits here and there and scored some runs early and took advantage of it. It's important to take Game 1 and have a quality practice tomorrow and come out Thursday against Jamie Moyer and do the same.

MARTY CORDOVA: We have to hit him better, is the most important thing. We didn't hit very well off of him. I think we know what we need to do and we've got to go out there and get hits. He's a great pitcher, he's done a great job for Seattle this year, but it's our job to turn that around.

MARTY CORDOVA: If I could say I'm going to get an infield single this way, and if I play a smaller park, I'd get a home run, and hit 800. We had a good pitcher out there, and that just shows what a good pitcher he is. It's hard to put the ball in play, when you have a guy with good stuff. You're trying to put the ball in play, got some breaks, put balls up the middle, a couple of infield hits, ground balls, and fortunately we came out on top.

MARTY CORDOVA: They were changing periodically throughout the game. Sometimes you'd have the bad shadows, sometimes cloudy. It's much easier to hit when it's cloudy than when you have the pitcher in the light and us in the darkness over there. But that's the way it is. Their hitters were saying the same thing. It's hard to hit here when you get those shadows, you've got to try to do the best you can, and put the ball in play. Definitely when it's cloudy out it's much easier to hit.

MARTY CORDOVA: I don't know, I'm not a scout, I don't know the scouting report things. The pitchouts, I have no idea. I don't think anybody is intimidated by any pitcher on any team. But obviously our coaching and scouting did the job, made a nice call, pitchout, and got to Ichiro, which was a big out for us, so give them credit.