NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 9, 2005

Chipper Jones

CHIPPER JONES: He seems to be locked in pretty good right now. We keep trying to challenge him with fastballs in and he keeps breaking them down in the corner. So he's in one of those zones that we all live for, that we like to be in at this time of year. Craig has been through this situation before. He's had his share of tough times. Now the last couple years against us he's really stepped it up and been locked in at the right time of the year.

CHIPPER JONES: I think the legacy is what it is. We've won 14 straight. We know how special that is. We're going to keep doing our thing whether we win or lose in the postseason. It's not going to change the fact that we've won 14 straight division titles. Would we like to win more playoff series? Yeah, of course. But it just hasn't happened for us. Unfortunately, in the past couple years, we've run into a hot Kerry Wood, a hot Mike Prior, a hot Roger Clemens, a hot Roy Oswalt, and having to go back through the Astros again this year is not an easy task. Not to say that this series is over because we plan on going back and playing another game in Atlanta. But the road hasn't been easy.

CHIPPER JONES: No, we'll be ready to play. Everybody's going to be ready to play. It's playoff time, and I think if we were 150 games into the regular season, you'd see some people dragging. But this crowd is electric when they get inside this place, and if you can't get up to play in this game, then something's wrong with you.

CHIPPER JONES: Well, we've got a lot of experience having our back against the wall. I think just with all the young guys, we've had 18 rookies on this roster at one point or another during the course of the season, and I think the one thing you just try and relate to them is that it's baseball. It's four balls, three strikes, three outs. The game is still played the same. Yeah, if we don't win today, we go home for a long winter, but it's still a game; go out, have fun, play the game, play hard, and we'll see where we stand the end of the ninth inning and hopefully we'll go back to Atlanta to play a Game 5.