NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ASTROS v CARDINALS

October 13, 2004

Larry Walker

LARRY WALKER: Well, you had to put a bunch of hits up together. That's what we did -- basically opposite what we did first game in LA. It was just a long ball. String of pitches is just as good as hitting the ball out of the ballpark. Our hits came with men on. Just kept adding up. You take those every game.

LARRY WALKER: Well, today it was done in the first inning. We hadn't even come to bat yet. Right away you're thinking, "Okay, they have two runs but let's get realistic, we haven't even made one of our 27 outs yet." With the lineup we have, you know, we're going to put balls in play, hit some balls hard, put balls in play, score some runs. Unless it's a crazy lead, it's not insurmountable for us to come back. 2-0 wasn't close to that.

LARRY WALKER: I didn't see what happened. I tripled the ball, looked like it could have been knuckling some. I'm not sure. Perhaps in the lights, I haven't talked to Lance (Berkman) or heard anything about what happened there. I think it did knuckle quite a bit, looked like it took off to the left. As far as getting the three hits the first NLCS game, it just could have been one hit, broken-bat flare, Vizcaino was playing pretty deep. I guess I thought I'd just drop one in front of him for a hit, I guess (laughter).

LARRY WALKER: Well, you know, we're realistic. We know anything can happen. I am superstitious, but realistically we know how good the Houston Astros are. They could come back and beat up on us quite easily. So we're not counting our eggs before they hatch here by no means. What's happened in the past with other teams isn't going to dictate what we're thinking.

LARRY WALKER: Did you tell by how hard I swung (laughing)? I took a shot at it, yeah. I knew it was at stake, I thought I'd give it a shot. If it was a closer game, I think we were up by five or six runs at the time, so I wasn't trying to hit a line drive. I was trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark. You see the result when you try to hit a home run, a strikeout.

LARRY WALKER: Well, I mean, you could possibly say luck. We had a lot of cheap hits. You know, I know in this game you could hit the ball on the nose three times and get a goose egg. So you take everything you can get no matter how they fall. But we got some fortunate hits that fell in for us, then the huge double by Jimmy (Edmonds) to clear the bases. That was a big pickup for us.

LARRY WALKER: Well, I took the first pitch strike fastball, took the next pitch slider for a strike. So I'm 0-2. I'm thinking, "Why didn't I swing?" Then I just thought the ball was up and away, got off the end I believe. I wasn't trying to obviously break my bat and kill somebody in the first row and bleed it down the leftfield line. That wasn't my objective. But I'm very happy with the result.

LARRY WALKER: That was good. It came after they basically pitched around Albert (Pujols), too. Scott has to be sitting here going, "Here we go, they're pitching around somebody to get to me. I'm hitless." He hit the ball hard. I think he had some good cuts tonight. He had a baseline ball in that sixth inning, laid off some tough pitches. I don't think it's as bad as everybody thinks. He's had a couple ugly swings. Some at-bats have been great. His timing was off but he had big base on balls, if that's such a thing, get on base and keep an inning going.