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MLB WORLD SERIES: RANGERS v CARDINALSOctober 27, 2011Ron WashingtonST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: Game Six Q. I know your season unfolded a little differently than those guys, but they talked about August 25th as the day they turned it around. Was there a moment in this season, regular season, to letting you know you had a really great team? RON WASHINGTON: If I have to look back and always talk about it, we went to Minnesota, won the first game, and then they swept us the next three, and that was the last meeting I called. And I think that was in June, because we left there and went to Philly. And we won the last game in Philly, and once we won that last game in Philly, I think that's when we got back on track. Because we went to Minnesota, I thought playing pretty good baseball, and the first night we played very well, but after that, you go through a season and there's always a team that seems to have your number, and Minnesota won the next three. And at the time they really weren't playing very well, but they played very well against us. And I think the meeting I had just to let my guys understand and know that we certainly wasn't acting like the Texas Rangers. And for all the new guys that were in that clubhouse, we play baseball a certain way, and if you can't get on board, we'll figure out a way to get you out of here. It wasn't a threat, it was a fact, because we wasn't playing baseball the way we should be playing. And we struggled a couple more days, but we played some good baseball against Philly, we got beat by Halladay, we got beat by Cliff Lee and we got Oswalt, and Harrison threw that game and went eight innings. We beat them 2-0 and I think from that point on we fell back in line. It was sometime in June. Q. Your pitchers have done a good job of limiting the No. 1 and No. 2 hitters in their lineup, 6-for-37 so far. How important has that been for you in terms of creating flexibility with Albert? RON WASHINGTON: Well, it's been very important because the more we can keep the top guys off the base paths, it gave us opportunities to have open bases, so we didn't have to pitch to Albert. You know, if those guys was getting all over the bag, it would be tough. Albert would have to swing the bat, then we would have to execute pitches and see if he would chase, and he's one guy that doesn't go out of his zone very often. So it would have been very difficult, but you know, sometimes in this game it's tough to predict, and that's certainly a situation that has helped us to slow down their offense, having Albert not being able to swing the bat. Q. Tonight Game 6, do you approach it like Game 7 when you manage it, trying not to have to play another game but just get a championship and get out of here? RON WASHINGTON: I am going to manage this game according to the way the game says I have to manage it. Of course our intentions are no different than they've always been, to go out there and win the ballgame. I'm certainly not going to go out there and start trying to outsmart the game of baseball. I'm just going to go out there and whatever the situation says needs to be done, I'm going to try to make sure I put my guys in a position that we can be successful. Of course all hands on deck, and we certainly are going to try to go out there no different than we've done all year to win a ballgame, and that's it. Q. You've had Josh Hamilton playing hurt throughout this time, and whenever you have a guy who's not at 100 percent, what are you looking for mentally from him before you decide to put him in the lineup as opposed to the physical part? RON WASHINGTON: Just that he grind, and that's our team makeup. We grind. Give us what you've got. That's all. Just give us what you've got. We have quite a few other guys in that lineup can pick up his slack, and one thing about Josh Hamilton and everyone in our lineup, you never know what swing of the bat and which guy swinging that bat is going to make the difference. All we want Josh to do is be the presence that he is. If they happen to make a mistake with a pitch in the strike zone, do the very best he can with it, and that's about it. Q. When you were a player in the '80s, what did you remember about the Rangers' franchise when you would face them? What were they known for back then? RON WASHINGTON: They was known for beating the heck out of you. If you could stay in the game with them offensively, you had a chance. But the key was staying in the game with them offensively, which was tough to do, because at that time they had Palmeiros and Rodriguezes and Juan Gonzálezes and those type of guys. You just had to try to stay in the game with them offensively. You ended up playing 10-9, 11-12 type ballgames, and now we're a different club. We can play baseball according to the way it's presented to us. If we've got to play 2-0, we play 2-0, if we've got to play 1-0, we play 1-0. If you catch us on a night we're swinging the bats and we've got to play 14-15, we can do that, too. We just did a 360 turnaround as an organization. We pride ourselves now on being a complete baseball team. Whatever the game asks us to do, we feel like we can do it. Q. With just one victory away from a World Series title, would you have preferred to play yesterday to try and get in there and get this thing done, or does the day off help you or hurt you? RON WASHINGTON: Prefer to play, not because it helped us to have a day off or hurt us to have a day off. It was a day to play, and that was the bottom line. But we didn't. Our mindset, didn't affect it one way or the other, because we're going to show up today and we're going to go through our process every single day that we play a baseball game, and at 7:05, get out there, strap it on and go for it. It did give some guys a chance that's having some little nagging injuries to get a day off of it, but as far as affecting us, no. We couldn't play. No one could play, so there it is. Q. Michael Young was talking yesterday about how the Rangers don't have maybe the same generational history like the Cowboys do in your area and that he would like to see this team start a tradition that fathers hand down to sons, et cetera. How important is it to you to be a part of the team that starts that type of generational interest in this team? RON WASHINGTON: Well, it's very important because Jon Daniels taking over as general manager here and bringing me in as a manager and giving me free reign to try to dictate the type of baseball that the Texas Rangers are going to play, and I think it's been a good situation for the whole organization. We've got some young talent that's getting opportunity that maybe in another organization they wouldn't have gotten that opportunity, and my hat's off to Jon Daniels for trusting us as the staff with that talent. It's infiltrating throughout the whole organization, the Minor Leagues on up, and now we have a style of baseball that we're going to play in Texas, and that style of baseball each year that we've been here has gotten better and better and better, and I think now that makes it possible for everyone that joins the Texas Rangers organization was expecting. And I think when there's expectations and there's things that we won't allow, it makes for that generation to grow, and now all of a sudden here is who you are, and that's what we're doing. Q. I guess this is kind of a variation on what was just asked of you, but with two World Series appearances now and the continued success and the good organization that you have in place, are you establishing the Rangers' organization as one like the Yankees or Red Sox or Phillies, just kind of that sustained success and can stay an elite team for a while now? RON WASHINGTON: Well, that's our purpose. Whenever you set out, you have a purpose, and that's our purpose, to be compared to a Yankee and a Red Sox organization. The Red Sox I think won two World Series, the Yankees got 20-something World Series, Texas Rangers haven't won any yet. So I think if we can get past this year and able to bring that World Series back to Texas, it's a start. But it's not easy in the game of baseball every year to continue to come out and be the top team that we've proven that we're capable of being the past two years. But I know with our front office and Jon Daniels and his group that gets out there on the baseball side and the development side, we certainly have the pipeline, more or less I guess in business you call it -- what's the word I'm looking for? Inventory. We have quite a bit of inventory of talent. And we have a staff that don't mind teaching, so that means we don't care about bringing them up and getting their feet wet and using the talents that they bring. So with that in mind, I think we do have an opportunity to sustain. How long that sustaining will be, I don't know, but our attitude will be after this year is over to do it again. And our commitment will be when this year is over to do it again, and the effort that we will give as a total organization will be to do it again. And anyone that's involved in that can't get on that same page, I'm quite sure Jon Daniels will move them on the side. Q. When you woke up today, did you feel any different? Was your routine any different? Did you have any different thoughts being so close to the title? RON WASHINGTON: No. I went to bed last night very relaxed, and I woke up this morning very relaxed. I did what I always do; I got up and ironed my clothes, I ate breakfast, I read the newspaper, and I left the hotel at 1:00, and I came to the ballpark. That's my routine. I didn't feel any different feeling. I walked out of the hotel feeling as confident about my baseball team as I've always felt all year. I walked in the clubhouse with the same confidence. I'm sitting right here with the same confidence. The butterflies haven't started yet. I'm quite sure they will once 7:05 rolls around. But the more that Colby Lewis goes and gets outs in an inning the more my butterflies will subside. And then we'll get into the ballgame, and then it will be business from that point on. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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