MLB ALL-STAR GAME

July 7, 1998

Jim Leyland

JIM LEYLAND: No, I don't think so. I think it was -- in some ways, it was a Coors Field type game. You saw some balls bloop in, freak hits, guys had to play deep. Then they hit some balls out of the ballpark. One big blow by Barry. It was kind of a Colorado Coors Field game in some ways.

MODERATOR: Any other questions? In the back.

JIM LEYLAND: Well, I think you saw all the festivities, it was wonderful. Obviously, we didn't like losing the game. Would have liked to have won it. I think you have to give Mike Hargrove and his staff a lot of credit. Aggressive on the bases. I'm not going to duck anything. I don't know if they did or not, we didn't put pitch outs, hold Tom Glavine step out for this game. I don't want to mess with pitchers that I don't know very well, breaking up their rhythm and pattern. Maybe it was my fault that we kind of let them run at will in this ballpark. I'll take that responsibility. Like I said, when you don't have the particular pitchers pitching for you, Greg said right away, I should have thrown home or something. If you want to throw on your own, that's fine. I talked to Mike about it. We didn't put in a game plan for a running game on purpose because, like I said, I don't want to be messing with the pitcher I don't know that well, messing his concentration. Your own staff you can do that, in this particular case, we didn't do that.

MODERATOR: Surprised that Vina was waved in?

JIM LEYLAND: I haven't talked to him about it. Might have been a situation, to be honest with you, where he thought the ball might go to second base because of score, got burned by it. I haven't talked to him about it. I don't have any problem with those things. It's baseball. That's why it's a great game.

MODERATOR: Anything else?

JIM LEYLAND: Let me congratulate the American League. They did a great job. Great opponent for us. They did a wonderful job. We were very excited to be here. Thank you, very much.

MODERATOR: Thank you.

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