AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: INDIANS v YANKEES

October 13, 1998

Mike Hargrove

MIKE HARGROVE: A little bit of both. I think when you have seen the pitchers throw strikes and pitch ahead of hitters, you have seen hitters struggle in the series. So I think it is a little bit of both. I attribute it more to good pitching than anything else.

MIKE HARGROVE: I think that, yeah, but I don't think it is just because of this series. I think it has been that way for a long time. I think if you go back to the '40s and '50s, and you look at the team that kept the Indians away from championships in that era and it was the Yankees. So I don't think that it is anything that is recent. I certainly think that this series has done a lot to heat up that rivalry. I think that is good for baseball and good for us. But I don't think it is anything most recent.

MIKE HARGROVE: The fans here in New York support the Yankees very vociferously. That is a 5 dollar word I learned in college. And it can be difficult at times, but you learn to deal with that. It really is no different than any other stadium in a playoff situation. But anybody's home field can be difficult to walk into and Yankee -- I am trying -- Yankee Stadium is tough. It is tough. It is tough in the regular season but it is doubly tough in the playoffs but nothing that can't be adjusted to.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, Sandy, I talked to him in fact, I talked to him right before I came in here. Sandy is ready to play. He has got a smile on his face which is good to see. How long he catches, how long we will wait and see. He feels fine. He stayed behind when we came here Sunday night. He stayed behind and saw our doctors Sunday evening and then again Monday with the therapist and got some treatments and worked their magic and he is feeling a lot better. Which is good. So I fully expect Sandy to be close to his best tonight and is it important that he catch Charlie Nagy? I think it is important anytime that you have an All-Star player that he is on the field in this regard, so, Diaz is a good catcher but he is a young catcher and he is not Sandy Alomar right now.

MIKE HARGROVE: No, the decision was made because Brian Giles' ankle feels good tonight, and so I put Brian out there. I think that maybe we all need to step back from this a little bit and realize what David said yesterday. I saw a replay of what he said, I read what he said about the fans of New York and all he was saying is the fans are very as I said vociferous, and the only way that it could be worse is if they brought uzis to the game. To me he was trying to be funny, and I think it has been taken too far. David is a player and David enjoys the competition of the game and also the fans and the New York fans are -- they are good fans. Good fans for the Yankees just like our fans are for us.

MIKE HARGROVE: Yeah, I would imagine they will be very loud. Does it matter? No, not really. We have still got to play the game. We play the Yankees, we don't play their fans. As I say, they are great fans. Really are, but the game is -- the Yankees don't compete against our fans and we don't compete against their fans, we compete against each other's ballclub and the fans bring a certain energy to the game in both ballparks and that is good for the home team. But that is not a bad thing.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, I think that you obviously don't win 114 games by not being proficient in all aspects of the game. I think the Yankees are outstanding, as Scott Brosius played outstanding third base for them this year. And Derek Jeter is Derek Jeter, what else can you say about that. Chuck Knoblauch has been big for them at second base, that has been a whole for them the last couple of years. Go right down the list of everybody they got to play and the positions they play and their top flight defensive players. How do I rank? Among the better.

MIKE HARGROVE: I think that this has been one of the years in baseball that we have all wanted to see for a long time with the home-run race between really the three guys; Griffey McGwire and Sosa, I think that has been outstanding for baseball. Very few times in your life do you -- can you say I was here when this happened and I bet any baseball fan can tell you exactly what they were doing when McGwire hit the home run to break the record. Myself included. So I think that is absolutely fantastic for the game. I think the fact that we saw a very exciting wildcard race in the National League was outstanding, and the postseason, I don't think is, at least in my mind, has diminished any of that. If anything, it has added to the excitement and interest in the ballgame. This is a great game played by people that play it like nobody else in the world and we should appreciate it for that.

MIKE HARGROVE: I think that it probably is a case of both. I think that not a lot of people paid a whole lot of attention to us during the season. There are times that we were not consistent in what we did. But this team -- I got a chuckle out of people saying that, that this team can turn it around when it needs to. We were turned on the whole year, it just didn't always work. You had those types of years. But the people that we do have can elevate their game that is not the same thing as turning it off and turning it on. So in that regard, I think that we are predictable. But that -- did I answer your question?

MIKE HARGROVE: I kind of pulled a Casey Stengel there, didn't I?

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, that is -- I can't argue with that description.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, I think that -- you have got to continue true to who you are as a hitter and while I loved to see hitters that I think hitters are better hitters when they hit deep in the count. I think that if you talked to most hitters they will tell you that, but there are some hitters that are not effective by not hitting deep into the count. I don't think you can clone anybody. I don't think you would want to clone anybody to be the same guy. I think the Yankees have been very effective in doing that all year long. But again, you have got to be true to who you are as a hitter and your talent and demeanor as a hitter. Personally, I would rather have people that worked deep in the count, but there are people that are aren't effective that way, so I am not going to sit here and demand and expect everybody to be the same.

MIKE HARGROVE: Much the same. Everybody is available to play. You know, we know what is in front of us we know that to drug out the old cliches, there is no tomorrow. I mean, you go out and give it your best shot. I don't know that you can expect -- I think when you try -- you start expecting more than that from yourself, then that is when you get in trouble. We know what we have in front of us. We know that we are good at what we do. And that we are going to go out and play hard and let our talent tell. If that is not good enough, that is not good enough. We don't have to sit here and play what if, you know, the entire off-season and that is exactly what happened last year in Florida. We took it a game at a time. Went into Game 6, needed to win that to win Game 7. Did that and took it down to win, two outs of the 7th game of winning the thing, but it didn't happen. It did not happen -- if I am stating incorrectly -- because we didn't pay attention to -- we didn't do our best at all times. It just didn't happen because it didn't happen.

MIKE HARGROVE: I don't know -- how do you account for Tino Martinez doing the same thing, struggling. Here is a guy that is a great hitter, a clutch hitter, one of the top run producers in baseball and he is struggling right now. I don't know how you explain that. If you could, then obviously they would all be hitting .500 and hitting home runs all the time. It is just part of the game. Pitchers in Boston maybe made their pitches against Omar and right now Omar is getting a few more mistakes and is doing something with them, that is the only way to explain it. Omar is a good offensive player. He is not a home-run hitter, not going to see him hit 30 home runs or 20 home runs, but when Omar stays within his game and does what he does best, and puts the ball in play or on the line and on the ground then Omar is a very effective offensive player.

MIKE HARGROVE: You know, I tell you this thing completely blind-sided me because if I had known that this was going to happen, I would have been here yesterday to field questions. I didn't realize this thing had gone to this point until I got home last night. I had gone out for a walk with my wife, got back at 6 o'clock at the hotel, had about 19,000 messages on my phone, and started returning calls as soon as I could. David Justice did not -- I mean, plain and simple, this is the way it is. David Justice had -- at no time did he beg out of the lineup, did he ask to be taken out of lineup, did he intimate to me in any shape, or fashion that he did not want to play. David Justice and I have a relationship, as I have a relationship with all my players, to where I expect them to be honest with me. And David Justice -- I read what he said to you guys, the entire interview that is exactly almost like he had a photographic memory that is exactly how it happened. I made the decision not to play David based on the information that I had and in that David's arm had been hit in the arm the night before, was a little stiff, he did say he could play even though it was stiff. He did say to me that he was feeling a little uncomfortable against lefthanders. David had not swung the bat particularly well against lefthanders the whole second half of the season. David Wells being -- if not the top, one of the top lefthanders in the game today. And I felt that in that game at that time that Richie Sexson gave us a chance a better chance to be competitive and win. That was my decision. Now, people don't have to agree with that. There is a lot of decisions that I make, that Joe Torre makes, that a lot of managers make that people don't agree with, they second guess. I have got no problem with that at all, but don't read anything into that other than the fact that it was my decision. I based it on the information that I just gave to you guys. I think this is a mountain out of a mole hill. David and I do not have a problem between us. I called David last night when I got back from dinner and we sat down for about an hour and talked about this thing and I asked David pointblank: "Is there something going on here that I need to know about?" He assured me, and David is from -- one thing about David Justice is David Justice is an honest person. Honest to a fault at times, but he is an honest person and he said, "No, Skip, there is nothing between you and me that needs to be talked about." We both have a mutual respect for each other in that we both do our jobs and do them well and that should -- that is the end of it. Now, if you want to question or second guess my decision not to play David Justice in Game 5 of ALCS, then that is all well and good. I will take that. But to go out and assume there is a problem between David and I or whatever, that is just not true. I can't be any more honest with you than that.

End of FastScripts….