NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v BRAVES

October 15, 1999

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: He's out of the Atlanta area, outside of Macon. And John struggled a bit in our Minor League system. It's the only one he's been in. I'm just saying he did struggle some early on in his career. He was always a starter, and they turned him into a relief pitcher a couple of years ago. He went down to the Arizona Fall League and did pretty good. He was fortunate enough to get a job in Puerto Rico, where he really had some good situations to come in and close, and I think he was an All-Star player. I think he made Fireman of the Year in a very short period of time, a guy that went through the expansion draft. We're fortunate to have him, and he's a super story, really. It's a great story.

BOBBY COX: I think just getting his feet wet last year helped him an awful lot. He was extremely successful last season, but he's not afraid to throw a breaking ball on any count, number one. He can throw almost a hundred miles an hour and drop a curveball on you. And just the experience of being up here for almost a year, half a year, and then he looked great all spring. He's looked good all season. It's a matter of maturing, and confidence is huge. To be able to throw the breaking ball like he does, it's huge. As hard as he throws, it's hard to lay off the breaking ball.

BOBBY COX: It's pretty similar. They had more hits off of him tonight, but I'm not so sure he didn't throw harder tonight. And I think he had almost 10 strikeouts a night or so, whatever he had. It was quite a few, and I thought it was just excellent. He just really moved the ball around, changed speeds just at the perfect times and went inside good and just did a super job. It's very similar. Two tough-hitting teams.

BOBBY COX: You'd like to have more runs, even with Tommy pitching, you'd like to get more than one once in a while. But it was unusual how we scored. We got thrown out by being aggressive tonight at second base a couple of times; yet we scored by being aggressive. Al Leiter, he certainly matched Tommy pitch for pitch the entire night, too. He pitched one heck of a ballgame.

BOBBY COX: Well, it helps me maintain a job seeing them come up big. Tommy won 14 this year and that's not bad. You don't have all the luck in the world all the time. Yeah, it's great to see it after -- it's a grueling season, your Spring Training and the entire season and you're expected to win. These guys are expected to win. They're in a category where they're expected to throw shutouts every night, and it's not humanly possible. But it's amazing to see what they do in the playoffs. I think I saw on the board tonight that was Tommy's 13th National League Championship Series start. That's a lot of years.

BOBBY COX: I don't think that has any factor at all. I'd rather have -- I said earlier today, the fans, even if they're against us, the number of 50,000 in the stands is great. It makes you feel more like playing, I think. And I'd be worried if there were four or five hundred people in the stands yelling those things. That would be a little rough. I don't think it has any factor on us at all. You're so pumped up and everybody is yelling so loud. There were some obscenities when he came out on the field and stuff like that, but you have to live with that.

BOBBY COX: Yeah, we're going to run as hard as we can. Chipper challenged Ricky and he got thrown out. I think the ball -- I didn't see it down the line that Eddie Perez hit, but I think it hit the wall and bounced to him. It should have been a double, but he's got a bad leg. I'm glad he went. I'm glad Gerald was trying to steal third when he did. We didn't get any good jumps off of Al at first base. We kept getting bad jumps, not being able to run for some reason.

BOBBY COX: No, you don't. You have to remember Ordonez made a lot of good plays tonight. It's not just one throw or one play. They have got a great defensive team there in the infield; it's just dynamite. It's a pleasure to watch them play. But we're going to make errors, too. We've lost games before on errors.

BOBBY COX: No. Tommy was done when he came off after the 7th. I told him to stick around; don't go anywhere, in case we get a runner on. He's as good a bunter as there is in Major League Baseball. I just wanted to make sure we got it down. He stuck around for a reason; that was to bunt.

BOBBY COX: Well, sometimes you can just tell. We both looked at each other in the 7th inning with two outs, and said: "This is probably going to be it." You can only bare down for so long without blowing apart. Tommy can answer that better than I. These guys are professionals. They tell you the truth all the time. They know best. We have a good bullpen. I sure hate to take a Tommy Glavine out, but if he's tired, he's tired and that's it. And we do it that way. And it's worked out really well.

BOBBY COX: We've played them tough and they've played us tough. You're right, the games have been very tight and there's been very few blowouts. They got us a couple of times on blowouts. Tommy has pitched four times against the Mets and gone 7 innings, 8 innings, 1 run, 2 runs. And tonight, there's some balls hit at us, too, that could turn the games around. We've been fortunate enough. I'm not just saying that, but there's a little luck involved in this stuff, too.