	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: ROUND ONE

March 7, 2006

Miguel Tejada

POOL D: ORLANDO, FLORIDA

MIGUEL TEJADA: No pressure. We love the game. We have 30 guys and we got to do what we do every day. Everybody got to do his own job. We can, as one guy we can't try to win the game just by one guy. We got to do it with everybody.
Q. Do these crowds remind you of what it's like to play back in the Dominican Republic?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Yeah. This crowd is like, playing with the same group of guys in the same country, and we love it. We are all proud to be here.
Q. You played in the playoffs, you've been in the playoffs. How does this compare to that atmosphere? How important is this to you and your career compared to a playoff game?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Right now it's like the playoffs. Every game is important with every team. And right now every inning is important. That's why you want to get off to a good start. And that's what we're doing right now. And I like to play in this situation that we do it like now. I like to play in that kind of game. That's why I want to try to do anything I can to help my team.
Q. What happened on your ankle there?
MIGUEL TEJADA: I am okay.
Q. You sure you're okay?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Yeah, the doctor checked me and I don't feel no pain. I don't feel nothing.
Q. That play there was an example of how hard you guys are willing to play?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Like I said, we got to play hard from the first inning to the last out.
And like I say, every inning is important for this in this tournament, because it's a short tournament and you got to win as most as we can.
Q. That little tweak you had there is exactly what people were concerned about with this tournament. Somebody like you getting hurt.
MIGUEL TEJADA: Well, you know, I'm going to play hard. I can't stop playing hard. And I just play hard. When I put my uniform on I'm going to play hard. I don't play the game halfway.
Q. Did you get a good look at the ball that Miguel hit? It appeared to hit off the top of the wall there in center field. It kind of looked like it was a home run?
MIGUEL TEJADA: I got a look. I just saw the ball bounce back and I don't -- it's hard tell what it hit. When you see the ball hit like that, you think it's a home run.
Q. A book came out today talking about Barry Bonds and steroid use. You were surrounded by that in the off-season and allegations and things like that. What's your thoughts on the whole steroid situation?
MIGUEL TEJADA: I don't want to start on that. Everything for me, that's in the past. I don't want to talk about it any more. I don't read anything about Barry Bonds or this. I don't hear anything.
No, I don't want to talk about it.
Q. When you talk about all the fans out there, David Ortiz said he was a bit nervous to see the Venezuela and the Dominican Republic love for baseball and for you guys, what did that mean when you got on the field there today?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Well, we just do it for our country. Now we play for the country. And we know that there's a lot of people just watching the games, a lot of people believe in us and that's why we just, we certainly, we never, we never just go halfway. We want to do something good for our country.
Q. How important to the people back home was this game in light of what happened in the Caribbean World Series?
MIGUEL TEJADA: I don't know. As a player, that's in the past. We lost the Caribbean Series and it's nothing that we had on our mind. Our mind is the World Baseball Classic. That was in the past. Now it's a new tournament. We're not going to worry about what happened yesterday. Today is a new day, it's a new tournament and it's a different place, this game than the Caribbean World Series. And that's why we take it like that.
We don't have anything against Venezuela. We just got to win the game. No matter who we play today.
Q. The atmosphere today compared to a Caribbean World Series, can you compare it?
MIGUEL TEJADA: It's the same. In the series there you got to play hard every inning. And every out is important. And here it's the same.
Like I say, it's a short tournament, and no matter who we play, we got to play hard.
Q. (Inaudible)?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Well, that's, like I say, how would I say? I like to play on a team that has a chance to win. Because if you play on a team like that, I'm going to do a lot of different things. It's not just going to play and hit a home run. I can steal a base, I can get on, I can bunt, because it's a game. And when I hit that ball, you know, this game is not about hitting home runs. It's not about that. We just got to play the game the way we played it today.
Everybody is the same. The game is the same. The team that you think that you can beat, that you can beat, they can beat us. They can play hard. They're going to play hard. They're going to enjoy playing and we got to do the same thing. We don't take anything for granted and we got to play hard because it's not who we play, we just got to think about us.
Q. (Inaudible)?
MIGUEL TEJADA: Sometimes, actually I did it last year couple times. And any time that I got an opportunity to do it, I'm going to do it because this game is not about just one thing, you know. At the moment you can hit or we can bunt. The game is not how hard you hit it, it's whatever we got to do is score more runs than the other one, we just got to get on base somehow.

End of FastScripts...

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297