March 6, 2006

The Week in Quotes

February 27-March 5

by John Erhardt

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"The machine was outstanding."
--Marlins' minor league pitching coordinator Wayne Rosenthal, on a pitching machine that recorded five strikeouts in an intrasquad game (Palm Beach Post)

"It's filthy."
--Marlins pitcher Randy Messenger, on the machine

"You can ask me about my off-season and you can ask me about my wife but just don't ask me about my performance today."
--Marlins backup catcher Matt Treanor, one of the machine's strikeout victims

"Fastball/slider. That's what he does in my video game."
--Concordia College shortstop Jake Waldman, when asked in an exhibition game what Twins pitcher Jesse Crain throws (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

"Our goal was not to get anybody killed. Those were our first swings [in a spring contest]."
--Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, on the exhibition game

"SO MUCH OF WHAT WE CALL MANAGEMENT CONSISTS IN MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR OTHERS TO WORK."

"Here's what I think specifically. I think that [White Sox World Series] championship, more than anything else, was a players' championship."
--Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, on the White Sox' World Series Championship last year (Chicago Sun-Times)

"I was taught this and I believe it with every thought I have: The competition is a competition for players. It's not for coaches and managers. But there is a real contribution that the manager and coaching staff can make by helping key players be in a position to win. And I think Ozzie did a terrific job that way."
--La Russa

"The answer that we try to pay attention to, then try to find a way to attack it, is human nature. Human nature for average people, average teams, is you have success, you celebrate, you lose an edge, you forget all that you did to have that success in the first place."
--La Russa

"I remember one time, John Madden explained a Super Bowl championship vs. the next year. They didn't play well and he felt like--and he included the coaching staff--that they had neglected to start the next year at zero. They remembered being world champions, so they started off thinking like that, and they didn't get back to putting that foundation back. That's the one thing we try to pay attention to. It's not like you are defending world champions, you are trying to become the '06 world champions."
--La Russa

"I got concerned he was getting too negative. That one time when he said they stink, time like that, I'm thinking, 'Man, you've got to get positive with the club.'"
--La Russa, on Guillen's "We stink" speech from last year after a 7-5 loss to the Royals

"People talk about the breaks the White Sox got. Well, if you watched all of the games, all of the clubs got breaks. It's just that the White Sox took advantage of all of them."
--La Russa

"I SAID, I'M A BASEBALL PLAYER." "ALRIGHT, LET'S SEE YOUR LEGS!"

"They asked me, and I did it. It was fun. I think I might want to do it again tomorrow."
--Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, on how he dressed up like Paula Abdul for an American Idol-style rookie hazing in Giants camp(Sacramento Bee)

"I won't tell my wife to hurry up now. I'll never do that again. The tape was killing me, and I couldn't get my hair right. I put on glasses--there were a lot of things I went through in 30 minutes to get that wig on. I was holding everybody up."
--Bonds (MLB.com)

"It was cool. It was a lot of fun."
--Bonds

"I don't wear jewelry anymore ... that brought me back in time ... wearing all that stupid gold."
--Bonds, on his getup

BENEDICT DAMON

"If people want to start offering for it, so be it. I just see it as hair."
--Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon, on his hair, which he has saved in a plastic bag (Boston Globe)

"They set a value on me, and I respect that. They didn't want to go over that threshold. But it's $3 million a year, and with that $3 million, I could help out so many unfortunate people."
--Damon, on how the Red Sox didn't match the Yankees' offer

"He definitely has to keep his eyes open."
--Damon, with advice to Coco Crisp when Manny Ramirez is playing left field

"I definitely won't go get Varitek."
--Damon, on what will happen should a brawl break out in a Sox-Yankees game

LA BOLA RAPIDA PARA EL ALMA

"No poetry any more. I've moved on to more scary things."
--Diamondbacks pitcher Miguel Batista, on his mystery novel set in Phoenix (Arizona Republic)

"The only thing I can tell you is you will never look at the city the same way."
--Batista, on his research into Phoenix's law-enforcement

"Stephen King makes it look easy, but he doesn't have to try to win the World Series every year. I have a real job to do."
--Batista

WAIT 'TIL NEXT YEAR

"I would think George, who was one of the most patriotic people I have ever known, would be the first guy to endorse this and tell his players to play. I am really surprised and disappointed that he hasn't done that."
--former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, on George Steinbrenner's criticisms of the WBC (MLB.com)

"You mean guys don't get injured in Spring Training? Guys get hurt walking down the street. All the managers, pitching coaches [are] very sensitive. Look, you can always pick at something, but there's a broader picture, a grander picture."
--Commissioner Bud Selig, on the criticism that the WBC may cause player injuries

"The focus should be on who is here, not who isn't here. The focus should be on the players representing their countries. I think a great deal of credit should go to those players."
--former Dodger owner Peter O'Malley, on how Steinbrenner should reserve judgment

"[It's] going to become a great event, in time."
--O'Malley, on the WBC

THE REST

"I think that this situation, one way or another, will be settled by Opening Day in New York City on April 3. That day. It might be 10 minutes before game time."
--Nationals GM Jim Bowden, on how Alfonso Soriano doesn't want to move to the Washington outfield (MLB.com)

"Whoever came up with this must be a person who uses nothing but the metric system, measures degrees in Celsius, can tell you exactly how many bricks it took to build Tropicana Field, and knows nothing about baseball."
--A baseball official on the the five-page D-Ray salary structure memorandum (New York Daily News)

"That will be the end of this dispensation. I really don't know how to explain it. I don't know what words to use so people won't think I'm goofy. But by Dec. 21, 2012 [the last day recorded on the Mayan calendar], people will have a pretty good idea. It's all about consciousness and love. We have the ability to create whatever we want. We're all made of energy."
--former Phillie Darren Daulton, on the end of the world (Philadelphia Daily News)

"They portrayed me as some doom-and-gloom guy. That's quite the contrary. That's not what I was trying to say. The end of the world and the day of reckoning? No, it's quite the contrary. If the world is ending, I don't know about it. The one guy from SI was talking about the Mayan calendar. I talked to him about it. The Mayan calendar is the end of this dispensation. It's not the end of time. And what I perceive is there will be a different level of consciousness than is taking place now. It's not bad; it's good. And this is what I try to convey in my book, some of the experiences that I've had that are not of our five senses. It's all good stuff. It's not negative."
--Daulton, clarifying his metaphysical remarks from an issue of Sports Illustrated (Philadelphia Inquirer)

"My knee is still hurting, I'm not getting any younger, my arm feels great, the rest of me is subpar."
--Red Sox pitcher David Wells, on playing this year in Boston (MLB.com)

"If you're a night prowler, good luck. You're not going to be prowling [in Boston]. You're going to be crawling back home. It's just hard."
--Wells, on being mobbed by Sox fans in Boston when he goes out

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John Erhardt is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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