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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: YANKEES v RANGERS

October 14, 2010

C.J. Wilson

ARLINGTON, TEXAS: Workout Day

Q. Can you talk about the influence of Cliff Lee?
C.J. WILSON: Well, actually before he was here, I was actually a right-handed second baseman (Laughter.)
Cliff has been great. The thing with Cliff is that he keeps his process the same no matter what is going on around him, and that's something that as I've gotten more comfortable in my role as a starting pitcher, I've had to thicken those walls in my bubble to keep everything else out and stay in my little zone and stay with what is making me successful and that's the thing he and I talk about all the time.

Q. What's your sense of satisfaction or validation from when you started the season trying to earn a spot in the rotation to where you are now?
C.J. WILSON: It's been hard to really answer that to be honest with you because we are still playing baseball. At the end of the season, when someone has been crowned the world champion, and a couple of days after that, I'm sitting on the couch, you know, jogging somewhere, then maybe I'll reflect on it. But right now, I'm just focused with what is at hand.
I'm happy with where the team is at right now but at least every guy in the locker room now feels like we have eight more wins that we are trying to get.

Q. What do you take from your three starts against the Yankees this season? And is there anything that you plan to do differently in your start tomorrow night?
C.J. WILSON: You know, the first two starts went pretty well for me in terms of, I limited the damage, I put the ball in the ballpark.
The thing that hurt me in all three of the starts was just the high pitch count from walks and stuff like that, falling behind in the count. I think I'm just going to get that knuckleball over the plate first pitch and see where we go from there (Laughter.)
No, I feel weird about answering questions about what I am going to try to do, I keep saying it's proprietary technology. This is obviously a good-hitting team and they are prepared. They are watching video and know what I've got and they have seen me a couple of times. It's going to see the adjustments of guys that have had success against me and vice versa.

Q. You're turning around Lance Berkman, you're turning around Teixeira, but still some other lefties in that lineup; what difficulty does that present to you?
C.J. WILSON: The more lefties the better, I guess, statistically for me. You have a guy like Gardner who is disruptive to the pace of the game regardless if he is going to be on base or not. You have to play infielders in. You have to be ready for the bunt, stuff like that.
And when he hits the ball, he doesn't have to hit it -- he'll hit it well to get on base because he's so fast, like Ichiro a couple of years ago. So in that sense, you know, the lefty/righty thing doesn't really play too much into it. I've had teams throw nine righties against me in a lineup and I've had teams throw four or five lefties in the lineup. For me, it all has to do with what I do with the baseball. If I throw it where I want it, that's going to be the best chance I have regardless of who I am up against.

Q. You have always expressed a great desire to be a great impact pitcher, maximize your impact for this team. Game 1, C.C. Sabathia, Ballpark in Arlington, is this what you're hoping, expecting, dreaming for?
C.J. WILSON: The shortest answer I can give you is yes. (Laughter.) Yeah, of course.
When you're a little kid, and you're in your backyard, you're taking like dry swings or pretending that when you're in the mirror, you're pretending that you're somebody or whatever, you put yourself in this position. You put yourself in Game 1, Game 7, Championship Series, World Series, stuff like that. That's what you work for. Every mile I've run, my entire life, and every little tubing exercise and sinker I've thrown playing catch is everything I've done to get to this point.
That's great but we still have more games after Game 1. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to take it and take all of the lessons that I'm continuing to learn, because I'm still very much a work-in-progress. So, you know, as well as I might have done here and there, like I still feel like I have a lot of growth left.

Q. Following up on that, I know it's you against their hitters, but do you find yourself saying, matchups, going against CC?
C.J. WILSON: Not so much. If it was Halladay or Lincecum, I would be thinking about what I need to do to hit that breaking ball or changeup or whatever. I don't face him.
Yeah, his uniform is much bigger than mine and his feet are much large beer than mine but I'm not trying to fill his shoes and get his hitters out. Our offense can put up runs against any team that we play. I matched up against Lester this year, Mark Buehrle, CC , Weaver, like all of the guys that are the best guys in the league. I got to pitch against all those guys because it's the Major Leagues and that's where all of the good guys are. It's just part of it. You are not going to get to the playoffs and play last place teams. CC is a pretty good pitcher. I'm just hoping for a couple of runs to work with, that's all.

Q. News reporter, non-statistical question, so everybody knows that Josh Hamilton has had this effort to stay clean, but will you talk about your lifestyle choice with drugs and alcohol and how I think that that has impacted the success in your career?
C.J. WILSON: The short answer to that is there's no short answer because it's like a whole lifetime of lessons that I've learned to get here. Realistically, I've been straight-edge since I was, I don't know, high school or something like that. My whole life, I never drank, I never used drugs or anything like that. And in this era, where so many guys are tainted and stuff, I would be in a club and feel good about it every time.
I know that I have not done anything other than work hard and read a lot of books to get where I'm at and in that, I think, it's very important for kids to look up to. I've had a lot of chances to interact with kids in the community as a local guy here for the last seven years in Texas and also back home in California; everything for me has to do with the fact that I have that in the background and that to rely on.
A lot of my friends back home are straight-edge and drug-free, as well, and Josh and I have a very odd bond because of that. The last couple of years him and I have gotten close because I was one of the few guys that he had the green light to hang out with, you know what I mean, because guys knew that I was a zero risk in that sense. He was going to come over to my room and we were going to play Xbox and that is what was going to happen, we were going to kill some aliens playing Halo.
For me, I got a lot of really good advice when I was a kid and one of them was like, hey, you know what, there are a couple of things that ruin careers, but why would you ever want to step down a path that's going to do that to you. It's like, well, I wasn't born with as much physical talent as other guys. I can't lay back and let that take over. I have to work for everything I've gotten. I'm a regular-size dude and I can't hit the ball 500 feet. I'm a little guy and I've always equated it to a work ethic thing and that's the way it's always been.

Q. Do you really throw a gyroball?
C.J. WILSON: I throw everything. The only pitch I have not thrown in a Major League game is a screwball. I have thrown a split, forkball, side-armed, everything. I've never thrown a knuckleball. The guy -- it's funny, because we had Fukumori on the team for a while. Him and I said, I've been to Japan, let's talk about sushi, just basic stuff, trying to be friendly and he knew the guy that basically wrote the book on the gyro and that guy came out in Spring Training in '06 or '07, I forget, and taught it. He gave me a pitching lesson in Spring Training and he taught me how to throw it.
To be fair, I don't think it's good for your elbow. I have had two elbow surgeries and one was after I started throwing the gyro. I don't throw it that much anywhere except as a demonstration. It's a funny spinning fastball that looks like it's going to do something different than what it is going to do spin-wise. It is something I have used in the past but it's something I don't really have great control of the pitch so for me it's not really worth using it in these type of games, unless like I'm just absolutely in the zone and something cool is going to happen if I throw it. Other than that, I'm not going to use it, except for messing around.

Q. Throughout the Division Series against Tampa, you, your teammates, all pretty much said that the history of the club in not having won a post-season series meant nothing to you. But, in the wake of winning it, everybody seemed to indicate that it had been a pretty big deal. Is overcoming the Yankees a big deal?
C.J. WILSON: Getting to the World Series is a big deal. Winning the World Series is a big deal. Everything is a big deal. That's why you guys are all here watching us and asking us silly questions. Realistically speaking it is a big deal but at the time you go and you play in Fenway Park for the first time and people are going to say, hey, you're playing in Fenway Park and you're like, God it's just baseball but then you're like, I did good.
Of course, at the same time, there is some sort of gamesmanship in the question and answer phase before something happens. You feel confident, but you cannot let it come out too much or else it's going to look bad. Or, like for instance, like a lot of people saw what happened with the Twins, and you know, it looked like a lot of those guys after the first game or second game were really bummed out and after we lost a game here, you know, or two games here, we could have been bummed out but we weren't. So we had the opportunity to like really stick together and just kind of do what we did all year, which was win baseball games.

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