AL DIVISION SERIES: RANGERS v YANKEES

October 7, 1999

Johny Oates

JOHNNY OATES: The game of baseball is a game of percentages. It all evens out in the end. We better start pretty soon.

JOHNNY OATES: If Helling doesn't go deep in the game, we're in trouble anyway.

JOHNNY OATES: Yes. We've made a couple changes. We're going to hit Royce Clayton leadoff. We're going to move Rusty Greer, who walks a lot, into the two hole and drop Pudge down into the three hole and have Pudge and Juan hitting back-to-back. McLemore will be dropped to the ninth place. Palmeiro will DH again and Stevens will play first. Get a couple guys at the top of the line-up. Hopefully they can get on base in front of Pudge and Juan.

JOHNNY OATES: It's a totally different atmosphere when you're playing for the pin stripes and when you're trying to play against them. I always came here, my rookie year with Baltimore, then a lot more so over at Shea and the National League. It's a tough place to come and play as a visitor. I had the opportunity to come here as a player in 1980 with that ballclub and found out how nice it can be when you're playing for the pin stripes. It's a very special place to play.

JOHNNY OATES: I feel pressure to win. I feel pressure to win. Certainly I think that from a national perspective, there's always more pressure on the favorite to win, and I haven't checked the odds lately, but I would probably guess that the Yankees are favored in this series. But I think once you get to this situation, there should be pressure on everybody to win. It's what you work for; it's when you're having fun and you enjoy playing this, but you certainly -- if it is all on them, they're handling it pretty well.

JOHNNY OATES: That's the reason we did not work out. I felt we would have had a skeleton crew out here working like we had. I think travelling from the west coast, a lot of guys with the flu, I felt it was beneficial to get the day off.

JOHNNY OATES: I really don't think that the flu has had an effect on the way we've played. Certainly, I am lucky, I don't have it. I had my flu shot a month ago. Hopefully I don't get it. I think the worst was in Anaheim when Stevens and Zaun and Shave and a couple of guys were really under the weather. I'm sure that the number of guys who have this flu are at 100 percent, but I don't really think that's had an effect on it.

JOHNNY OATES: I think it is a factor. We're professional athletes. Most of us are trained in physical skills of how to throw the ball, hit the ball, run, some of us -- some of us less than others, have had some psychological training and know how to deal with that thing between our ears. Whether we admit it or not, it's affected. I think sometimes success takes care of a lot of those problems. Until we have success, it's going to be a question that we have to answer.

JOHNNY OATES: I don't think there is any one answer. Individuals are the teams. As the manager, you sit back and take a read. Sometimes it says say something, sometimes it says be quiet. With this ballclub, I have found that being quiet works better, because they are a veteran ballclub; they know what it takes to get going, and regardless of what happened here Tuesday night, I think our ballclub is very confident about tonight's game.

JOHNNY OATES: No, I think they're all aware of it. They know what's at stake. Basically, what we tell them is it's okay to be nervous, but don't panic.

JOHNNY OATES: Bobby's had two really nice years for us being our fourth outfielder. At times he has been our number three outfielder and sometimes two. He's done a great job coming off the bench spot starting. I know at times he struggled against Pettitte, but we felt getting a right-handed bat in there tonight would be a plus. And he's had a lot of big hits for us this year. So hopefully tonight it will happen again.

JOHNNY OATES: As I shared with our beat writers today, I think it's exactly opposite Tuesday night. I thought we were too patient. We took seven walks, I try to go back with the tapes, how many normal swings did our guys take. We became too passive Tuesday night. Rafael's line drive to first, he swung the bat pretty good. Clayton struck out a couple times, had real good bat speed. Other than that, going back looking at tapes, we didn't have a whole lot of bat speed in our swings. We were too passive, too patient, I'm afraid if I swing at this pitch it's going to be out of the strike zone. Certainly we don't want our guys chasing pitches in the dirt and swinging at pitches over their head. We don't have to take pitches two inches off the plate waiting to hit that pitch. We can hit that pitch. I'd like to see controlled aggressiveness tonight. Not just swing at anything they throw up there. A lot of those pitches two or three inches off the plate are going to be called strikes anyway.

JOHNNY OATES: I don't have any regrets for anything that I said. Everyone has to be held accountable for their own actions and what they say. Basically what I would say is that any's allowed their feelings and allowed to say anything they want to. But I think the key thing is not so much what you're going to do, what have you done. That's the key. We can all talk and say what we're going to do, but in the end, we're going to be judged on what we have done, not what we're going to do.

JOHNNY OATES: We sat down this afternoon and Rudy Jaramillo was in agreement with me when I brought it to the attention that there's a fine line between being selective and controlled aggressiveness. And hopefully we can get that point across tonight and maybe take some of the burden off of them that so much has been made of the Yankees' patience, and we threw 175, 176 pitches night before last in eight innings. That averages out to something like 22 pitches an inning. Maybe we're a tight ballclub that can make a pitching staff throw 22 pitches an inning and get the job done. I'd like for us to play our game and not try and play the Yankees' game.