NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v BRAVES

October 19, 1999

Bobby Valentine

BOBBY VALENTINE: Outside the park at Shea?

BOBBY VALENTINE: I'm pretty aware of it, I guess. I have a lot of contact. All my friends -- probably not all of them, but two of the three friends that I have (laughter), called and they were really, really excited, wanting to know about tickets and what's going on. I've heard the stories about where they were and what they did, the ones who weren't at the game. I had a whole bunch of people at the game, which was wonderful. But since then, yeah, I think I have a pretty good feel. It's really exciting.

BOBBY VALENTINE: It would be bigger than anything that ever happened to me in New York. I think it would be really large. I think that we're close, but we're really far away from that right now. The attention has really got to be on Kevin Millwood and the Braves. I know it's going on. I'm not sure that if my players said they did not feel it, that I wouldn't be disappointed.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Everybody is ready to go. Mike is in the line-up and Cedeno is in the line-up, and they say they're fine and ready to go. And that's what they are. They're fine. They're not probably great physically.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Absolutely. I think that the thoughts that many of us had leaving Spring Training have been solidified in that people who got to see him play at AAA were extremely excited, and his contributions here and during the season have earned him the right to be on our team next year; if, in fact, there's a spot for him and he has a good spring and all those other things that come into play.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Yes.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Since he came off of the disabled list, he's had all of his pitches, and he's been able to work both sides of the plate and all that. But he's had a couple of innings where he drifted into the middle of the plate and he got burned. I think in the last few games, he's stayed away from drifting into the middle of the plate and kept his concentration intensity up, to go along with his quality pitches.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I mentioned to David at the beginning of the series that I thought that Octavio would give us a strong presence if we needed him. I didn't think it would have to come in the rain of a tie game of Game 5 in extra innings. But I was very proud of his effort. I don't want to sit here and say, "Well, it's exactly what I expected," because it sounded like I said that about Mora. But I was very confident in his ability and his chances of rising to the occasion.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, you strive for perfection, and I don't think any of us are perfect. I think I said to someone after the game that when the one inning started with Agbayani on base, I was hoping that he would run. I was trying to get him off and get him running. The conditions weren't conducive to that. That being said, I still think I should have hit Kenny Rogers with two outs and Agbayani on first, giving Benny a chance to steal the base, then pinch-hit for Kenny. If he gets thrown out, let Kenny pitch another inning.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Replaying the game, I guess, isn't necessarily a second guess. But I think replaying the game is the education process that we all have to give ourself. If you can't learn from the experiences that you live firsthand then, A, you're not experiencing; and B, you're a dummy, because you're not learning. So I think you have to go over those things. What usually happens is you go down the road of the what-ifs; there's an endless path. Like with Rey, for instance, when Benny walked on all the high pitches the other night and Rey gets the bunt sign and he bunts a pitch that's up over his head, you have to say to yourself after the game, as I do, "Geez, I wonder if I game him a take, if it would have been a better idea"? If the pitch is right down the middle, it sure isn't a better idea. But you have to say -- give him the bunt, you expect to take him a pitch over the head. But if I gave him a take, I wouldn't worry about him taking a pitch over his head. There's all the things of what-ifs that you just learn from. And usually what you do is you check off and you say, "Nothing you could have done about that; nothing you could have done about that".

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, I won't make this too long of an answer. But I think if you don't do those things, I think it will drive you crazy. If you don't enjoy what you're doing and you don't have confidence enough in what you did after it was done, to go back and say "What if," then you'll be driven crazy by the haunting of thinking about it, not the haunting of what-if, but just: "Is this the time that I should think about that, oh, God." And I think you would go crazy.

BOBBY VALENTINE: You know, I have not mentioned that. I bet there's a percentage of guys in the clubhouse, who even though they've seen the footage of the ball going through the first baseman's legs when Mookie hit the ground ball, didn't understand the entire scenario. Matter of fact, a lot of them probably thought that won the series. I don't know what all the guys think about that. So, no, I haven't necessarily mentioned that.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I was asked that before. And we're playing in a place that we've won 1 game and lost 14, and we have Kevin Millwood pitching against us, and people say: "Everything is going your way." (Laughter). I think that we have a good team and I think that we really do what so many good teams do, and that's give it our best right until the end. When you do that, things don't get away from you very often in the middle of a game, or even at the beginning of a game. And eventually a good bit of fortune catches up with you.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Yes. Just my own observations, it seems that way, yes.

BOBBY VALENTINE: The roster is constructed the way it is because coming into this series, I was very reluctant to hit for Rey because Rey came up big in RBI situations throughout this entire season. And I thought that he became a better hitter as each month passed. That being said, if I did pinch-hit for him, Melvin Mora would be the shortstop. And with the roster constructed as it is, for me to plan on Melvin being the shortstop becomes like Plan 3C. There's a lot of plans for Mora to play in a baseball game. To have him come in at shortstop means that I have to have a plan for the plan that I had to use him prior to that.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I think that's a very admirable thing that he does, and something that some day I hope to grow up and be just like him. (Laughter).

BOBBY VALENTINE: I don't read every paper. I don't read every article. But when they're brought to my attention with someone going, "Did you see this one," I'm just always tempted to read it. I don't listen to the radio that much. And Joe Torre did say -- his advice to me when I got the job initially in '96 was: "Don't listen to the radio and stay away from the newspapers." So I think I've weaned myself off of them. There's only so much time in the day that I have. What I try to do is read a lot of national stuff and read about the other team, the team that I'm playing, that we're playing against.

BOBBY VALENTINE: John has lived through this situation for a long time. He's dreamed about it. He's stepped up big, and he's thrown every pitch with as much quality, I think, as he's thrown in his entire career. John Franco, just for the record, was going to the All-Star Game this year before he hurt his finger. Some of you might not know that. He was going to miss by one vote of going to the All-Star Game. Since then, Armando Benitez, once John wasn't there, stepped up and did a great job. When John got back, he returned with one inning of Minor League rehab and then had, I believe, eight innings of pitching prior to the postseason. He's kind of just hitting his stride in rehab. I really like the way he's throwing and the way he's conducted himself this entire time.

BOBBY VALENTINE: You know, I really can't tell you that until today, I guess, because there wasn't a lot of peace or relaxation the other day. I think when the game starts, I think that most managers could tell you that they're most at home and they're most relaxed. It's where they're most prepared. It's doing the thing they like to do best and they're probably best at. I feel that way. So as far as more relaxed or less relaxed, over the last couple of days, we've had about three innings that there's been more than two runs separating the two teams. This is what we do.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Maybe it is just the more we've done it, the more relaxed it seems, yeah.

BOBBY VALENTINE: One thing for sure, Todd Pratt knew the entire situation of that game. He knew when he went up where he stood and what he had to do to get us a victory. I'm not sure that Robin makes it around the bases if Todd doesn't tackle him. I'm not so sure that he ever gets to home plate. The dugout's overflowing; the only question was which way to run for 30 guys. They're going to go to home plate and jump on Roger for scoring the run, or go all the way out to second to find or wherever he was, to find Robin. It's probably best to know the situation of the game. I know that Todd knew the situation. I really wish that Robin, for whatever silly futuristic reasons there are, I wish that he got full credit for all the numbers that he deserved with that one swing. But the one number that was most in his mind was the one in the win column.

BOBBY VALENTINE: You know, it came time to pay the clubhouse guy, John Holland (ph), and it was everything within my power not -- to write out the check. It was the last thing I did. I had the check out. I had it sitting there the entire postgame, during the entire time. And I was going to do one of those things that would have gotten me in trouble, I'm sure, and said, "I'm going to fill this out when we come back." And I didn't. So there probably was a little doubt whether or not I was coming back. But it was right until the -- everybody was out of the clubhouse and I made it out, as the last-ditch effort. So that's how I felt. I wanted to do something to show that I believed we were coming back, but I guess I just didn't believe all that much.