NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: MARLINS v CUBS

October 8, 2003

Jack McKeon

JACK McKEON: I don't think so. What's wrong with pitching to Sammy Sosa? Because he hit a home run? Did he beat us?

JACK McKEON: I had a flashback in 1984 when the Cubs beat us like 13-2, 13-0.

JACK McKEON: We're very happy coming out with a split against this very good ballclub. We went to San Francisco, and were happy to come out with a split and it worked out all right. Pretty tough to go into the opposition's ballpark and win two in a row.

JACK McKEON: Just didn't have good location, and we fell behind early. You get down 8-0 in the third inning, and you're in trouble. And even if Sammy does hit one. We gave him a chance to hit another one, the last time at-bat.

JACK McKEON: I don't think because a guy had a bad game you cross him off the board. When you look at the 14 wins he put up during the regular season, I think that's got to count for something. I mean, we're talking about the match up on Friday, and we got a pitcher that's 14-9, and the guy is going 14-11, it sounds like we don't even have a chance. But the guy won 14 games, I don't think you can push him out the door because he had a bad couple of innings. He's pitched pretty good for us most of the year. But, no, nothing is etched in stone, but right now we haven't -- if there's a problem or doesn't have a good workweek, we'll re-evaluate that, but to say he won't pitch in Game 6 at this time would be a nonissue.

JACK McKEON: Who do I take out? Do I think Mike will start?

JACK McKEON: Who will I take out of my line-up?

JACK McKEON: We'll make our line-up come Friday.

JACK McKEON: Yes, I think you have to look at him and say, hey, we're not pitching to him too good. He's been a bigger threat than Sammy or Alou or any of those guys. He's a tough out. He hit us pretty good the last time we played him.

JACK McKEON: Boy, I'm going to quit doing this stuff, you want to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I wanted to give Mike a couple of at-bats. What's the odds of us coming back from a 10-0 deficit? Pretty slim. Since he was the shortstop before, we just wanted to put him back out there and get him familiar with that territory again, in case in the future you had to do a double switch and make a move?

JACK McKEON: No, I thought it would be a close game, with their pitching and our pitching, I thought it would be low-scoring games, 3-1, 4-2, 5-3, I didn't expect to see us getting a number of hits off Prior, but we helped them out with a lot of base on balls, too. When you get a lot of base on balls, you add up the runs.