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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: ROUND ONEMarch 7, 2006Corey KoskieErnie WhittPOOL B: PHOENIX, ARIZONA Q. One for each of you. Corey, your reaction to the homerun. Obviously, you're wearing your country's flag on your shirt, but at the same time compared to your team's show tonight, time and time again coming back. COREY KOSKIE: That was pretty exciting, you know. You're early -- we're early in spring training and stuff like that. And play with this intensity at this time of year. There was nobody going 75, 80 percent. It was 100 percent, 110 percent all the way through. Nobody was leaving anything behind. You saw that with our guys. Everybody was out there, and they were giving 110. It was -- we're going after it. Q. Ernie, a lot of people thought this game was going to be a tune-up. ERNIE WHITT: No, no, no. The media thought this game was going to be a tune-up. Q. Fair point. Can you describe your emotions on the bench tonight? ERNIE WHITT: I mean, it was a great ball game. I mean, you look at it. Good pitching from both sides at the beginning. You know, this a true test of where we needed to go, but I think the good point is we kept battling back and that just shows the character of this ball club. Q. Did you talk to the squad before they came to bat in the 9th when it was down to three outs? ERNIE WHITT: No. I talked to them before the game, and obviously it didn't work very well, did it? It took about five innings for it to kick in or whatever. But, I mean, everyone was speculating South Africa was going to be a pushover, and it just goes to show, like I've said all along, you have to play every game as if it's your last in these type of tournaments. And they gave us a great test. It was a good ball club over there. They had some good arms over there, and they got some timely hits. Q. Corey, did they surprise you at all? Because frankly, whether you won easily or not, on paper, your team is a much better team than South Africa. COREY KOSKIE: Yeah, I was surprised. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from that team. No idea what kind of pitching they had. No idea what kind of defense they had through the infield. It was just -- when the guy came out in the first inning throwing the ball pretty well, had pretty good sinker. It was kind of, you know, I was surprised about the caliber and how good they were. Q. Corey, I'll start with you. I'm wondering if you felt a little edgy in the 9th when you had to go to bat actually trailing this team? COREY KOSKIE: I'd be lying if I said I didn't. That's one of the great things about baseball. You know, when I knew right I had a pretty good chance because the guy's a low ball pitcher. You see how quick his hands are. They're phenomenal how quick they are. You got to pitch to drive and hit the ball a long way to win. When they got that triple, I thought we got a chance here. So it was exciting. Guys are jumping up in the dugout. It was exciting. Q. Ernie, we talked before the game about how you were going to manage this one. At what point did you realize you kind of had to change your approach a little bit and go all out to win this one and end up going deeper in your bullpen that you probably expected? ERNIE WHITT: Well, again, we had planned on using every pitcher that we threw tonight. We didn't expect some of them to throw as much pitches as they did. Some results were not the way we wanted it, but we did plan on throwing all those pitchers tonight. So, you know, I mean, we wanted to get all the players in as much as we could. As it turned out, it was a ball game where we had to keep a lot of players in. Like, I wanted to take Corey out, you know. I wanted to take Morneau out. I wanted to take Bay out, Laforest. Again, we got a 2:00 game tomorrow against USA. But again, just, you have to play the game. And, you know, they kept battling and we kept battling. It ended up being a pretty good ball game. Q. Corey, is it possible that tomorrow the team will be more relaxed playing against U.S. than it was tonight because of the familiarity and other aspects? COREY KOSKIE: You know, I don't know. We'll see. You know, that lineup is pretty good. I guess they got Dontrelle going tomorrow. So it's going to be -- you know, it's always to get that first game under you to kind of get the edge off a little bit. So, you know, I expect a little more relaxed approach from us. But, you know, that's big. Get that first game under your belt, get the edge out. Q. What could tonight, the middle of your lineup, what can Dontrelle Willis look for tomorrow? You guys have a pretty awesome middle of the lineup. Ernie, if you want to answer that and also Corey? ERNIE WHITT: Again, it's a quality pitcher going against a quality lineup. We'll find out tomorrow who's going to win that matchup. But again, when you're talking about a pitch count, you know, I'm sure Dontrelle is probably going to throw three innings, three, maybe four, you know, if he breezes through. But, you know, I expect it to be a good game. I think tonight was a little bit of wake-up call for us. Tonight's game really kind of reminded me of the game we played in 2004 in Greece against the Greece team. You know, that was one of the games that I feared, and it was a close game through six innings back in 2004 at the Olympics. But it also seemed to make a little bitg of a wake-up call for us as a team also. Q. Ernie, does having to leave your starters in as deep as you had to today cause you to change how you're going to use them tomorrow? ERNIE WHITT: The starters? Q. Position players? ERNIE WHITT: Oh, the position players. No, I mean everyone wants to play. No one wants to come out of the game. I mean, you know, but it's my job as a manager to try to win the ball game. And again, I look at it that, you know, we play three games in a row. We'll feel how the game is going tomorrow. If there's a chance to rest some of the guys for the Mexico game on Thursday, we will. If there's not a chance, we'll play nine solid innings or whatever it takes to try to compete and try to beat the USA tomorrow. Q. You obviously are going to play tomorrow's game different. The fact that you won tonight as opposed to losing tonight, it's a whole different ball game, isn't it? ERNIE WHITT: No, no. You know, we still go out and we're going to play hard. We'll play the Canadian way and that's hard, aggressive baseball. And, you know, we'll just go inning by inning and see what happens.
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