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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC POOL C: TORONTOMarch 6, 2009Mike JohnsonJustin MorneauJoey VottoErnie WhittTORONTO, ONTARIO THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Justin, as a Canadian, how important is this tournament to you as a Canadian ballplayer? JUSTIN MORNEAU: With how much fun we had last time, and the big win that we got against the U.S., it will be even better if we did that at home, and, you know, if we come out tomorrow and have a big win. At the same time, we can't put too much pressure on ourselves. It's enjoyable any time you get to play for your country and get together with all these guys. We have a blast together. Everyone knows each other pretty well. We've got a few new guys in, but we've jumped pretty quick. Q. Ernie, judging by the fact that Mike is sitting up there with you, we're going to guess he is starting the game tomorrow against the United States. If that is the case, how did you arrive at having him as a your starting pitcher? ERNIE WHITT: You should never assume anything. He is our closer [laughter]. No, Mike will be starting for us tomorrow. And basically, we chose him because we feel that he can pitch on the stage. He's done it before. He's our most experienced guy, and we don't think that the fact of playing in front of the home crowd will bother him. You know, he throws strikes, he changes speeds, and so we're looking forward to Mike going out and throwing us 70 pitches. Q. Justin, you mentioned the win over the U.S. last time. How big is that for you going into this tournament knowing that you were able to beat maybe the favorite from this round the last time around? JUSTIN MORNEAU: I think they only have five guys back, or something like that, from the last time. I think we snuck up on them. I think they're going to come out ready for us tomorrow. Our line-up, I think, is pretty solid from top to bottom, and, hopefully, we come out and -- like, we put up eight runs in that game, and, you know, we're going to need to score some runs, obviously, to win. But, you know, we take a little bit of confidence from that, but we have a bunch of the same guys back. But, at the same time, it was three years ago, and it's two different teams, and we got to come out, and -- you know, these short tournaments, these, you know, games like this, it's -- if you get a couple big hits, you can get a lot of momentum, and that can carry you through a game. As opposed to 162 games, where you are trying to win the series and all that stuff. Hopefully, we can get off to a good start tomorrow, and then get the crowd on our side and just kind of feed off that. Q. Justin, I'm curious, the batting coach and first base coach is Larry Walker. I got to cover Larry a long time ago in Montreal. To see him as part of the coaching staff and the hitting instructor and a guy from B.C., like yourself, I wonder about the connection, kind of the legacy of a ballplayer like that now being part of this team. I think for the first time in international setting and a having him with you personally, is it inspirational? What's it like to have a guy like him around? JUSTIN MORNEAU: It's pretty special to have a guy like that. He is the greatest Canadian position player that we've seen in Canada, and, you know, one of the greatest all-around baseball players in the last 25 years. He is a guy that doesn't take himself too seriously. He's very humble and he is great to be around. I've been picking his brain a lot and just asking little things about what he liked to do when he was hitting, what he was trying to do in spring training, all these things. When you are around somebody like that, he actually got in the cage yesterday morning and took about three swings, hit three bullets. Everybody was kind of watching. It was pretty impressive. You try to learn as much as you can when you are around guys like that. Q. Mike, can you talk about the opportunity tomorrow going into the game for the U.S., and looks like 40,000 or more fans at home? MIKE JOHNSON: Just a great opportunity. I mean, a couple years ago, I never thought I would be here, let alone starting the first game against the U.S., kind of relish the opportunity to pitch in front of the hometown crowd. We have a really good team here, a great line-up. I'm just going to try to go out there and give us, the team, a chance to win, pitch three, four, five solid innings and give our offense and defense a chance to win the game. Q. Mike, was wondering if you would weigh in for me in the last three years and where you pitched and the journey to this point, getting to start the Canada/U.S. game? MIKE JOHNSON: I had [] Tommy John surgery in '05, and missed the last WBC because I was rehabbing. Came back from that, played independent ball for two years, '06 and '07, and was actually having some arm problems and was considering retiring before last season. I ended up getting a call from a team in Taiwan asking me if I wanted to come and play. Not really having any expectations about the season or looking too far ahead about getting back into the game, agreed to go over there. And a for some reason, my arm just kind of went over a hump and I was able to throw, like, 185 innings, which was the most I've ever thrown in my career, and ended up having a pretty good year. And now, I'm here today. So, I mean, I can't really explain it. It just took me about two or three good years to come back from my surgery and get back to where I am right now. Q. Is it surreal? MIKE JOHNSON: It is. I mean, I was telling somebody the other day that I was -- I've been kind of planning towards the WBC, like, since my surgery, as just being the swan song to my career. I've been playing a long time. This is my 17th year of playing professional baseball, and this was going to be, like, the final, final stage. I mean, this is what I was looking forward to, to get the opportunity to come here and play, and especially play on this team with all the great players that we have. I mean, Justin Morneau, former MVP, Jason Bay, rookie-of-the-year, being on the team with Larry Walker, future hall-of-famer, it's pretty special and surreal. Q. When you all were younger -- this is a relatively new tournament, but when you were younger watching Canadian teams play in the hockey tournament or maybe a world soccer tournament, did you ever get the feeling how cool it would be to wear national colors and play for a national team, what it would be like in your sport? JUSTIN MORNEAU: Well, growing up, obviously, most of us on this team were hockey fans, and, you know, we watched the Canada Cups, then later the World Cup, and Olympics, and all that kind of stuff. You know, the pride this country has for Team Canada in any sport is pretty special. And then obviously, we have the Junior program where we -- if you get selected for that, that's a pretty cool thing. You know, that's when you kind of meet the other Canadian ballplayers and kind of see how you stack up against those guys and you get to play in the world tournaments and all that kind of stuff. Then they came up with this. And, you know, it was a great idea. I mean, to get the best players together, playing on the same team, and with all the pride involved, it's something you dream of. But growing up, we didn't really have that. And now we have it, and, hopefully, it inspires other Canadian kids to want to play baseball, to want to be on this team. JUSTIN MORNEAU: Along the same lines. Just watching hockey and Canada Cups and the Olympics and stuff growing up, and playing baseball never really thought about something like this coming about. But now that it has, and I've been fortunate enough to play in two Olympics now, and just to play with the national team on the international level, it's always special. It's probably some of the best teams that I've played on - not only players on the field, but just comradery about how quickly we're able to come together in a short amount of time. And every time I'm able to put on a Canadian jersey, it's just a real special time. Q. Mike, have you been able to fully recover from flying around the world to get here? JUSTIN MORNEAU: I think so. I mean, I've been pretty much sleeping regularly through the night. This is, like, the fourth time I've made this trip this year already. So I'm getting pretty good at it. And I think with the atmosphere tomorrow and with it being an afternoon game, I believe that it will help me out. It won't be like it's in the middle of the night. So that will help out a lot. But obviously, the atmosphere, the crowd, and just being the first game, I don't think I'm going to have any problems staying awake for it. Q. Mike, your career's gone a lot of different directions. Rule 5 guy, played for the Expos, played all over the world here, played at every level, and now you're doing this. You just mentioned that maybe this is coming close to the end for you. Can you just put into perspective what you thought you might have for a baseball career and what you ended up with now that it's close to being said and done? JUSTIN MORNEAU: Always hard to say. You never know what's going to happen. But being drafted in '93, I obviously thought, like, I got drafted, I'm going get a chance to play in the big leagues and stuff, was fortunate enough to do that. I kind of took a different route than a lot of other guys did to get there, but you I still look back and I got to play in the big leagues, which is something I'll always cherish. I don't know. I think if you ask anybody, once you get drafted or signed as a free agent, however they get into professional baseball, like, do they think they're going be playing for 10, 15, 20 years, they'd probably say yeah, otherwise why would they be playing. I mean, they're playing to get to the big leagues and playing on the biggest stages in the world. And I was probably no different than any of those guys. Obviously, after that, my career has taken a little bit different path, playing in Aisas for parts of four years, and a couple Olympics, international events, and stuff like that. But I don't know, I wouldn't really change anything. Q. Ernie, because of defections and injuries to your pitching, have you had to set up your rotation in groups of two or three? And what's been your strategy in setting your pitching staff? ERNIE WHITT: Well, we've got all 13 guys available to us tomorrow. Beyond that, we'll see where it leads us. You know, we have ideas of how we want to utilize guys, but, again, that will all be determined by the way the game is going on how we use them. The only restriction that we do have is with Aumont, from Seattle, where, you know, he is able to pitch one inning for us tomorrow. If he gets up in the bullpen, we have to put him in the game, and it has to be a clean inning. So that's the only restriction that we have as far as our pitching staff is concerned. Other than that, we're just going to, you know, use them all. After the first game, then we'll make a decision for the second one. Q. Ernie, question about something different. In recent weeks we've had -- baseball's gone through a lot with A-Rod's admission and the Barry Bonds off-and-on trial, that sort of thing. How much does baseball need a tournament like this to remind people about the game itself and what it's about? ERNIE WHITT: Well, I think this is great for the game of baseball. I think what people saw in '06, was countries coming together, cheering for their players. Unfortunately, this year, there's been a lot of injuries. We haven't been able to get guys that we've wanted to. Other teams have gone through the same thing. And I think the biggest thing is the timing of this tournament is not the greatest. Any time you have a tournament where you have restrictions on your pitchers, how many pitches they can throw, it makes it difficult. So it's really not a world series of baseball or -- I mean, you want to have your restrictions taken away from you so you can play the game the right way. The concept, I think, is great. The timing of it is not the best. I think we've improved since '06. The fact that guys are a little more game-ready than what they were in '06, because they started spring training earlier, we were able to prepare. So I think that's going to help us out. But I still think there's some hurdles to be made. But hopefully tomorrow you'll see the way the crowd will react, that, you know, the fans will get behind their countries and really support it full heartily. Q. Justin, Ernie was just talking about the timing, as a player, from a player's perspective, is there a better time though? Would it be better to, you know, have an all-star break that lasts a week, is it better to do it in November? From a player, when would you like to play this tournament? JUSTIN MORNEAU: . I was actually just kind of thinking about that. There's not really a good time in baseball. I mean, to be able to play with this many teams, you'd have to have two weeks in an all-star break. Kind of like they do for the Olympics and the NHL, they take a couple weeks off. But then the pitchers, the guys that aren't there are sitting around so long. It's tough. I know definitely most of the guys would say no. Myself I would probably say no, you know, or I'd have to think about saying no if the thing was in November, just because that's right in the time when you are done with the season, you are recovering, you are starting your workouts again and, you know, the last thing you want to do is come out of -- if you are not in the playoffs, you are sitting around for a month and all of a sudden you got to turn it on again and go out and play on a pretty important stage. Maybe later in spring training when guys are a little more prepared and pitchers have already thrown 4-, 5-inning starts. But then it's tough when you got guys trying to make teams and they're trying to make decisions on players. If a team doesn't see them, it's hard for them to take a guy on their team over a guy they've been watching the last three weeks. The timing of it now is about as good as you can get, in my opinion. Because you're not going to take that much time off in the middle of the baseball season and, you know, at the end, wintertime is just not anyone's real preference, I think. Q. Justin and Ernie, how much more important was it for you to get early knowing that guys would have had a couple at-bats, innings pitched with their own team, then getting time to spend together as far as bonding and kind of implementing, Ernie, for you, a system and style which you want to play? How important was that extra week for you? ERNIE WHITT: As far as I'm concerned, it was great the guys were able to more at-bats. I think the pitchers are more ready. I know the position players are a little bit more ready. But, you know, as far as style of play, our style of play, you know, hopefully our pitchers will go out and throw strikes, have the opponents put the ball in play early, and our hitters will go out and slug the ball. That's basically it. I mean, see ball, hit ball; you can't get any simpler than that. We've got a pretty good offensive team, as everyone knows, from top to bottom, a real good offensive team. We're just hoping to score a lot of runs. And, you know, we've got some young kids that have never experienced this stage before, from the pitching staff, and I think that, you know, we're going to see how they respond to it. Q. Mike, I understand Russ Martin has a video that might be a little helpful for you. Can you talk about preparation for the kind of line-up you're going to face and the extent to which you can prepare? JUSTIN MORNEAU: Yeah. Russ and Luke both have a program on their computers that shows hitters' tendencies on certain count, on certain pitchs that we went over on the plane from Florida up to Toronto last night, just gives us a better idea of how we're going to approach a guy in a certain situation with a runner on or open base or if he is ahead in the count or if we're ahead in the count. So it just gives us a better idea of what -- of how the game's going to go. So we're on the same page and not fighting ourselves as we're going and we're not going in there blind. Definitely helped out a lot, and should be interesting. This will be the first time Russ has caught me, so warming me up in the bullpen. So he has an idea, the way my pitches work and stuff. And I told him, I mean, obviously he's played in the big leagues and caught against a lot of these guys and called games against these guys, that I'm probably just going to go out there that, as long as he knows how my stuff works, I'll try and tell him my tendencies, but I'm going to kind of let him kind of call the game, and take a lot of pressure off me. Try to make it easy on myself as possible. Keep the ball down, throw strikes, and try to get some quick outs. Q. Justin and Ernie, the '06 tournament probably exceeded expectations as to what people thought it might be and Bud's talked about how this tournament's kind of designed to globalize the game in ways that other sports have kind of gotten ahead of baseball maybe. If the timing can't be changed, and it probably can't, how much different would this tournament be if you could get basically the maximum, the best players from every nation without the pullouts, without the kind of guys who aren't here, and without the pitch restrictions? If you could have a tournament that was flat out baseball, with the absolute, absolute best players from every nation, what could this tournament be and what could it mean for the sport? JUSTIN MORNEAU: For me, we try and -- I mean, it would be great to have the best. Guys aren't healthy all the time. It would be great to have the best player from every country playing and to see -- to be a true measuring stick for where we're at. You throw out the names of our starters who aren't here, guys were hurt, throw best of the four starting pitchers in all of baseball, not just Canadians, you put that up against everyone. Last year, Minnesota, we lost Santana and Hunter, and we focused on what we had, not what we didn't have. That's what we're trying to do here. Guys that we have here are here for a reason. They're quality, professional baseball players. And we'll focus on what we have, and not what we don't have. That's kind of the best way to go about it. And it worked for us last time and hopefully we're successful with that. And, I mean, in the best-case scenario, yeah, would it be great, but we have to be realistic, and guys, for whatever reason, they choose, guys choose not to come or guys that aren't allowed to come, it's just part of it. And we deal with it and we'll enjoy the guys that are here and enjoy putting on that uniform that says "Canada." THE MODERATOR: Thanks, guys. Questions for Joey Votto. Q. I'm wondering if your swing is where you'd like it to be right now? JOEY VOTTO: I had a really good first few games playing for Cincinnati and in Sarasota. You know, last two or three games weren't great, but I'm confident. And, you know, I've had the opportunity to work with Larry in the cage and talk to him on the bus, and, you know, I anticipate being completely prepared for the first game and ready to go. Q. How pumped are you to be playing this tournament in your hometown? JOEY VOTTO: Great question. I'm very excited. You know, I slept in my bed last night, and I hoped on the train and took it down to Union Station and, you know, it's just -- I just love this city. And I get to have family and friends at the game, and see my family afterwards, have dinner. It's just really, really special for me. Q. How many are coming from your family? JOEY VOTTO: I've got three younger brothers and my mom and my Godfather. I have some friends, but they'll be spaced out through the stadium. But in the family section, those are the few people that I'm really looking forward to seeing. Q. Joey, just following up on that. How different is the excitement of what you went through last summer when you came here to play with the Reds compared to the excitement here playing basically World Baseball? JOEY VOTTO: You know, when I played against the Blue Jays last year, I was a little out of control. You know, my focus wasn't there. I was taking in a lot at once. And this year I really want to get rid of some of the distractions, concentrate on the game, prepare myself, and just play great baseball for Canada. It was difficult last year because I had a lot of stuff going on, but, you know, hopefully this year works out well, and I'm confident it will Q. How much talk has there been amongst the players that played in 2006, about how, you know, it may seem like a daunting task to face the Americans, but we beat them. You know, we can upset them. Has there been much talk about that, like drawing from that? JOEY VOTTO: No, not much. Guys have just been concentrating on getting themselves ready and preparing to execute. You know, that's our job. And that's the best way we're going to have any type of opportunity to consistently play good baseball and win baseball games. And that's all they've been talking about. And that's exactly what I expected to hear from a lot of guys who are true professionals and guys who are stars and all-stars, and, you know, MVPs. And I think that that's, you know, what I really looked forward to before coming to this team, is seeing these guys and learning from them and picking up some of their really professional traits. Q. You mentioned Larry Walker. I assume you probably grew up watching Larry when he played for the Expos. I wonder what it's been like for you to be able to pick his brain and have him with you? JOEY VOTTO: It's so cool. I asked him about the consecutive years where he hit about .370, or .375 in Colorado, and won the MVP, and somehow he finished 12th after wining the batting title. He is such a great guy to be around. He keeps things simple. He is very professional, and he is an easy going guy and gets along with everybody. I am learning a lot from him. You can't help but hang around with a guy who's got incredible talent and dominated the game. I talked to Eric Davis when I was in Red's camp, and he said Larry Walker was probably the best hitter he played against, and arguably the best player he played against. He put Barry Bonds and Larry walker in the same category. And to be able to hang out with that guy is something else. Q. Joey, aside from Walker, how much have you been able to draw on the experiences or maybe some of the helpings from Stairs and Morneau and some of the other veteran guys that have played, not only in this event, but have had some serious big league time? JOEY VOTTO: All those guys are great. Every single one of them. Jason Bay's kind of a quieter guy, but he's another great guy for me to take things from and learn from. I'm young a player who has very little major league experience. And I'm hanging out with a bunch of all-stars. That's where I would like to get to one day. And, you know, hanging out with these guys and watching the way they prepare, the way they handle themselves, and their -- just their confidence level going into this tournament is something I feed off of, learn from, and try to apply to my game. Q. Joey, if Sidney Crosby took the Go Train to work, I'm sure many people would recognize him. Did any of the morning commuters look at you funny? JOEY VOTTO: No. No, no, no, no. It was -- you know, I grew up on the Go Train. I used to take it to school every day. That and the TDC, and I totally felt at home. Nobody bothered me. And, you know, it was -- honestly, it was the complete opposite to what I did last summer in Toronto. You know, I got rides everywhere, and I took the team bus. And, you know, just simplifying things, going back home, and, you know, just doing things I've always done has really, you know, just calmed me, and that's big time. And you know Sidney's quite a bit more popular here in Canada. I would go up to him and get an autograph if I saw him on the Go Train. I think I do have his autograph actually [laughter]. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Joey. Appreciate your time. End of FastScripts |
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