AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

October 2, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: What a start. Actually, I called our minor league field coordinator, Jim Ratz [ph], and explained to him they are going to instruction league right now. We are going to work on pop flies in our lower minor leagues and they will get it right. Yesterday we knew it was going to be tough here. (Inaudible) we ended up hitting pop flies to our infielders and outfielders take them during BP yesterday. I thought it was kind of a fluke, you have a pop fly that goes up, first baseman can't get it, third baseman can't, and the only guy there is Radke. He said I saw it the whole way. I said, "You might want to try to catch that today." It was one of those days. We had a tough time early in the game, but to our baseball team's credit, they kept playing. That's what we have been doing all year. We did some things right later in the game and gave ourselves a chance.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, it's tough to simulate -- how do I want to put this? Tough to simulate 4 o'clock in the afternoon at 11 o'clock in the morning, where the sun is going to be, so I can't hit that fly ball that's going to go out there to Torii Hunter at 4 o'clock at 11 o'clock. So these guys have been through that. I think their center fielder had a ball -- Long had a ball right before that, right at him in the same situation as Torii, they both went down to the ground and caught the ball. It's the high sun there. Ball looks like a golf ball when it goes up. You try to keep the ball in front of you, don't let it get over your head and you will be okay, but once the game starts, who knows what's going to happen out there. We saw that yesterday, and you just keep playing and we will take our chances.

RON GARDENHIRE: Your guess is as good as mine. We know it's tough here. I mean, sure, if the wind is whipping around, but yesterday it was kind of whipping, too. We saw a ball early in the game -- when Koskie hit the ball early in the game, we thought he got it and the ball got knocked down and Dye catches the ball. We thought he got that ball. During BP the ball was just flying and then as the game went along it started flying to the (Inaudible) but not down the line, but we know it whips around in here because of the shape of the stadium. We have talked about -- and we will hit some pop flies again today, and I am sure they do it themselves here all the time. Hopefully, it won't become a factor. We got Joe Mays' sinker ball pitch. If he is throwing ground balls, we won't have to worry about the fly balls.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, we have always, from Tom Kelly days when he was the manager here and I was a coach under him, we always talked about taking care of our own ballpark, so when you play a lot of baseball games in front of your fans and the expectations there are for you to get after the game and play to your fans, our fans are very good there and they are very loud and we have a baseball team that fits our Metrodome. The surface is fast, we have got some speed, we run around, we're a double hitting team, you can bang it around off that baggie, and we know our fill and we know when we are on that Astroturf we are fast and we have it use that to our advantage, and we try it do that.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, I think it can be, but, you know, each team that comes in there is a little different. There is a lot of teams coming in there, like [inaudible] comes in, I don't think -- they won two out of three last time, they were beating the ball pretty good. And if you can pitch, you can play in the Metrodome. That's what we try to play, if you pitch and catch the ball you got a chance. We do that, we catch the ball very well on Astroturf and we set our team up for that, and Oakland does a good job of pitching, so we know it's going to be tough no matter where we are at, but we like playing in the Metrodome, we have had success there and we feel very confident there.

RON GARDENHIRE: We have had troubles in the dome, too. The roof gets getting darker because they can't wash the doggone thing. We have had a chance to play there a little more than other people so there is a little advantage. When the ball goes up in certain spots, it's tough. If you take your eye off the ball in certain spots, you got a chance to lose the the ball. Our players know that, but we still lose balls. But we are there more than most other teams so we have a little bit of an advantage there.

RON GARDENHIRE: I think so, but you got to remember, we have to play there more than anybody else so we don't want it to be a disadvantage for us if the ball starts going up and nobody can find it, so we are going to try to get them to wash it this year.

RON GARDENHIRE: I was talking with our reporters earlier about that. There is no simulating how loud that place is. I mean, David Justice knows, he was there. It's unbelievable. We have had huge crowds this year. When they move those curtains up and you fill that up and you get the atmosphere of a playoff and it's buzzing, when people start roaring in there, it is unbelievable loud, and you really can't hear much out there at all, and it's something that we are going to have to deal with, our young baseball team, but there is some kind of excitement in there and it is very, very loud.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, I would hope that we got a little bit of those jitters out of us. That was probably the ugliest two or three innings you will ever see our baseball team play, I hope. Hopefully, we will come out there a little more relaxed today. We know that we are facing one of the best left-handers in the league, if not the best, and we know it's going to be very tough for us today and we have to come game ready and we are going to have to put together some really good at-bats against these guys, and this guy is unbelievable tough on us, we know that, so helpfully, we will be a little more relaxed and have some bats early in the game.

RON GARDENHIRE: We hope so, when a ball goes up they don't say anything, but it's playoff time, when a ball goes up, everybody screams. That's a communication thing. Our outfielders have been playing together all year. They know you got to watch the ball in the Metrodome, and they have a good feel for what everybody is doing out there. Hopefully, we will be able to handle that, but it's going to be different, and they know that, we have talked about it, it is going to be different.

RON GARDENHIRE: Yeah, Mientkiewicz, Koskie, (Inaudible) that's our baseball team. We can have a little maneuverability with our DH. LaTroy is DHing today rather than Ortiz. And these guys can hit left-handers. The left-handers are tough pitchers. There is a lot of tough left-handers in this team, and to say we are struggling against left-handers, I don't know about that, I think everybody struggles with these guys. You got 20-plus wins with Zito and this guy has got 19 today. They are beating a lot of people and they are pretty tough, so I think we can handle left-handers. I like our hitters but more so than that, we put a defense out there. We talked about pitching and defense, these are our best bunch.

RON GARDENHIRE: Reeder has been fantastic since the

All Star break. For him to go home and know it's going to be a huge game with a lot of people, he is very confident, and I think he has been in this situation before, so I think he can handle those things. As far as the trade stuff, I have even talked with Mr. Pohlad about that and he said at one point, "I was the only guy that didn't want him around here, I tried to get rid of him. Now I have to eat my words." So that's pretty good, Mr. Pohlad stepping up and knowing this guy has pitched well and done everything we expected. Reeder is a great guy in the clubhouse and we look forward to him getting the ball on Friday.