|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL AMarch 5, 2013Ray ChangJohn McLarenFUKUOKA, JAPAN CHINA – 5 Q. What is your impression of tonight's contest? JOHN McLAREN: First of all, I want to congratulate Brazil and Barry Larkin. Great story. I mean, it's a feel‑good story and he's done a great job over there, and they are like us, we are trying to generate interest in baseball where they don't play baseball, so I'd like to congratulate Brazil. They have a very impressive club with good athletes and we'll hear from them again. Very gratifying game, because all our kids, you know, they are not used to this. This is a feel‑good, all the way around, because they work so hard. And both teams played well. Both teams could have won, and we were fortunate to put a big inning up right there at the end. Q. For Team China, this is a very big win, how do you personally think of tonight's winning? JOHN McLAREN: It's just a great feeling. Like I said, I hate to repeat myself, but I work I've worked with these kids since September in 2011, and it's just how far we have come, it's incredible. Jim Lefebvre and Terry Collins started this, and with the help of Bruce Hearst and art how and our Chinese coaches, it's been a nice ride and I congratulated the team and I told them to go home and tell everybody in China, what a great feeling it is to play baseball and spread the word, so that was my message. Q. This tournament, you played three games, your record is 1‑2, what is your impression overall? JOHN McLAREN: It was good competition here and I thought we competed, and we can take that away from this tournament. Besides winning a game, guys can take back to China that we can play baseball. We can compete with good teams. We played a good game against Japan. We played a good game against Brazil, and we were able to match against Cuba. So it's just something, like I said, my motto is get better every day and we got better today. Q. Bottom of the eighth, your base hit what a big base hit turnaround what was in your mind? RAY CHANG: Before I get to that, I just want to say that everybody on our team deserves to be up here. You know, everybody had a role in this game, and everyone did their job. The starting pitcher, Bu Tao, did one heck of a job, and all the relievers. You know, I just want to‑‑ it was an unbelievable feeling obviously, but I want to personally thank Art Howe, during the game in Japan, I was trying to do a little too much, and he told me, you know, just to be myself, and you know, I did, and I trusted in myself. It was just an amazing feeling out there, I couldn't put it into words right now. It's such a big win for our team and the country of China and the development of baseball in China. Just, wow. Q. You have a big smile on first base after the base hit, is this probably the biggest base hit of your baseball career, or how do you explain this go‑ahead base hit? RAY CHANG: That was the biggest hit in my life. I've played seven, eight years of professional baseball, and I've had some, you know, clutch hits in my career, but nothing, nothing like this. This is not for a A or AA team, this is for an entire country. We know how big this game was and you can just see the emotions on the guys faces after the win and how much it meant to them, and to be able to play a little part in that at the end is just surreal, and I can't even believe it. It was an awesome win. Q. The last tournament you defeat Chinese Taipei, this year you defeat Brazil; which is more of a big meaning to you, comparing 2009 to 2013? RAY CHANG: That was a team win. Both of those are team wins. Baseball is definitely not a one‑person game. Like I said, our pitchers just went out and did a fantastic job and kept us in the ballgame. I actually made the mistake of not going home on that play and gave them another run, but thank God I got an opportunity to kind of redeem myself there in the end. They both were good games for the country. You can't really say one is bigger than the other. This one was just‑‑ this was just now. And you know, it seems a lot bigger now just because it's in the moment, but it was just awesome. Q. This morning you said that you felt like you had lined up your pitching exactly the way you wanted to do and you got a good game out of all your guys tonight; how gratifying is it to know that the work you put in throughout the tournament helped tonight? JOHN McLAREN: Yeah, I think it's always extra special when you have a game plan and the game plan actually just works its way through all the way. You know, Bruce Hearst did a great job. We talked about what we wanted to do. We actually switched pitching and switched pitching around. Bu Tao was big for us tonight and he did a marvelous job for us. To be honest, he wasn't the original starter. He was originally going to start against Japan, and we made some adjustments. We just felt like that he was better suited to handle this game, and he did. He did a fabulous job for us. Q. Some of the players on this team are very young, and three years from now they will be back in the WBC; who are some of the guys that are going to be stars of the tournament in 2017? JOHN McLAREN: You see most of our guys on the field right now, we have got a couple young kids there on our bench, and Dong Wei, young catcher, I see a bright future for him and Shu Okamura, we will see him starting to develop, and some of our young pitchers. There are a lot of people that we not seen over in China. I love when young players start coming through the system and that's what we are trying to do is try to get a system going. It would be exciting. I don't know if I'll be part of it or not, but hopefully I will be. I'm just so happy for the Chinese federation, because we keep moving forward and that's all we are trying to do is keep moving, taking the step forward. RAY CHANG: To answer your question, I hope they ask me back. I have been blessed to play for Team China once again, you know, and to play in the 2017 World Baseball Classic‑‑ like John said, we have a lot of young guys here that China should be excited about. It would be awesome to play with these guys again. Q. You said your hitting approach needs work, you work the count too much, but in the eighth inning, walk after walk, you were working deep counts and you had a pretty good approach to the plate; what did you see from your hitters in that inning? JOHN McLAREN: I've never seethe enthusiasm in a dugout like that. There was cheerleading going on and there was chants going on, and the guys, they stepped up. I mean, they did things that you really don't do that well, and they did them well. So that tells us that we can do it. It was always a great feeling, like I said. Hit bats men, base on balls, big hit by Ray Chang, we did everything it took to win the game. Whatever we needed to do, we did. But I'm sure you're going to be on the team, you've been on all the World Baseball Classics, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure you're a lock. (Laughter.) Just want to thank everybody, all the media. The way we were treated by the Japanese people was incredible. It's an experience we'll take home and you did a great job, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|