NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v BRAVES

October 17, 1999

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: Yeah, everybody was out of pitching, out of players, basically. And yeah, both teams were wearing down, and we couldn't throw strikes in the last inning. The mound was getting tacky and the shoes were getting tacky; it was hard to release the ball. No excuses. You still have to throw strikes. Both teams played tough. It was an unbelievable ballgame. Again, both teams were shut down with their hitting.

BOBBY COX: I wasn't going to use Millwood tonight in that stuff. He's a Big Leaguer. He should be able to throw strikes and get them out. We thought he would.

BOBBY COX: Any team, you know, you give them a chance to win. Nobody is going to give up once you've gotten this far, no team is. Everybody should be that way.

BOBBY COX: We missed way too many opportunities tonight. We should have scored many more runs. We had a few more chances than they did, and swung at a lot of bad balls tonight. The pitching was good. They made us swing at bad balls. We made them swing at bad balls. But the pitching is good. It's not an easy way to lose the ballgame the way we lost it. But in Kevin's defense, the mound was tough. It was tough to throw strikes off that mound, and your shoes were stacking up with clay underneath them and it was tough. I don't care who you would have brought in, they would probably have walked them, too. It was hard.

BOBBY COX: Well, when good pitching -- we left a lot on, I know that. Maddux, earlier in the game when we squeezed with two strikes, that ball was right down the middle. I've never known Bret -- he's never missed one of those. I don't know what happened. He didn't either. We would all have been home about three and a half hours ago if we got that down. But we missed it.

BOBBY COX: It would have been the same. They did a great job. I'm not blaming the mound. I'm saying when the mound is tacky, the mud builds up and your shoes stick, it's very, very difficult to throw the ball. But it was fair for both teams. They did a great job keeping the field in play. It rained for at least three hours, I think.

BOBBY COX: I don't think so. It is if you win, but we lost, so it's not a lot of fun. We had our chances.

BOBBY COX: He was stealing on the play, and he did slow down and he didn't know where the ball went. There were two outs, so I said he should have kept going, and it was just enough to get him at home plate. We had to send him there. We played in total rain. I was surprised the game was played as clean as it was with the walks and errors, and things like that, because it was wet out there. They made a great -- we had to try that because the ball is wet, and they made a great play on that.

BOBBY COX: I just kept hoping Kevin would throw strikes, and he kept doing that. And Dunston is a hard guy to walk, number one, because he's a very aggressive hitter, and he eventually got a base hit. Kevin got the ball down on the ground, and he hit a base hit up the middle. Kevin threw good; it was difficult for him, though.

BOBBY COX: No, with -- no. We could have done a lot of things differently, but I didn't want to do it. Just the weather and the one-run lead just wasn't worth bringing in Millwood and moving the rotation around. I'd rather be given the opportunity of being on our own field with a good mound.

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