NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 6, 1999

Larry Dierker

Jose Lima

JOSE LIMA: They have been checking the side of my pants every year, all year-round about if I got pine tar. I keep saying, if I cheat, if I put pine tar on my pants, nobody is going to beat me, I will be nasty, nasty that I am. You know what I mean? They just wake me up. They keep checking my pants, the more they are checking my pants, the better I am going to pitch because I know in their head they think I am cheating. I don't have to cheat to win ball games. I have been doing it all year-round. I don't win 21 games because of luck. I went out there performed and challenged everybody. That is what I did today. Why cheat?

JOSE LIMA: It was Bobby Cox. He said: Go check his pants in the first inning. They did it in Kansas City; Arizona; home a few times. It didn't bother me. That is part of the game. They want to check my pants, it is fine with me. I know I don't have nothing there because I am not going to be stupid enough to go up there and have pine tar on my pants then they check me and suspend me. This is not time to be suspended. We are in the Playoffs. This is probably the biggest time in my life; why get suspended at this point.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, a stronger game has not been pitched against us all year long. He says he doesn't win 20 games by accident either. The other guy doesn't win 18 and have an E.R.A. Of two and a half he threw hard. He spotted his fast ball well, he threw hard. He has a curve ball to finish you off. And we really only hit two balls hard the whole game. At home he pitched two-hit games against us; today one hit. He got 18 wins this year. To me, between himself and Jones, they can go for the Cy Young. He is an outstanding pitcher. He is young, but he is pitching real well. He changes speed real well. You see what happen, I give a lot of credit to him. I tip my hat. He beat us.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, at that moment. We never did anything after that. To have something going, you have to start seeing the two, three guys start getting good swings, start hitting the ball sharply, and it just never happened. All year long we have played a lot like this. It's been an improbable journey for us. We kicked the ball around quite a bit. They got a lot of bleeder-type hits; a little bump-ball that hit Caminiti's glove would have been a single. If it hadn't hit his glove and if he had caught it would have been a double play. So I mean, when you are going to have a game where you don't have the luck, and you don't make all the plays, I would prefer to have that game when a guy is pitching a one-hitter against me because you are probably not going to win anyway. Yesterday we played a real sharp game and I hope that on Friday we will play another sharp game.

LARRY DIERKER: I will start out. Basically we regard Brian Jordan as a fine all-around hitter. When a guy is a good hitter like that you can't just pitch him one way. If he had a real sore hand and he couldn't get around on the inside pitch then we just keep pounding him inside. But he has been swinging well enough in this series that I think we have to pitch him like any other good hitter like Chipper Jones or anyone else. We have to use fast balls on both sides of the plate and we have to change speeds and we have to throw some breaking balls. In this series he has gotten a few hits but outside of that ball he hit out to the centerfield fence he hasn't hit the ball really hard.

JOSE LIMA: Yeah, we didn't change anything. We know he is a good hitter. He didn't hit 300 by accident. We tried to pitch around -- pitch inside like Larry said, tried to make some adjustments, keep the ball down with the slide and fast ball in. In that situation we try to pitch inside, it was good, but he is a great ball hitter; cannot complain. We cannot be down on ourselves. We have got to go home on Friday and try to do the best in front of our fans. This is not over. We have to go out and play hard and we have to do the little things to win and I know if we do, we are going to be the champions this year.

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