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April 10, 2006 The Week in QuotesApril 2-9YOU GET ME CLOSER TO...CLOSERS
"I know Mariano's got it. Lord forbid, the Earth should crumble if two people have it."
"I met (Metallica's) James (Hetfield) last year, but I don't listen to that kind of music. Everyone just identifies me with the song. I listen to Christian music."
"If the guy feels comfortable using the song, then let him be. I know Billy. He's a great guy. He has all my respect....To all the people that are fighting over this, I appreciate the loyalty."
"Oh, I heard it. I was waiting for my song to come on, then crickets. It was disappointing. There's definitely a big difference when you come in and it's 'YMCA' instead of my song being played loud. That gets the adrenaline going and the crowd into it."
WHAT THE FOULKE
"You guys are always talking about me being the closer--I tell you what, I don't wake up in the morning and go to the grocery store and say, 'I'm the closer.' He's the manager of the Boston Red Sox, he's not Keith Foulke's dad. (Papelbon's) been throwing the ball great."
"I'm fine--I've told you guys for three years, what's important is the team winning. Maybe I'm not in the closer's role now but the Sox won. I have to prove myself to Terry, the 24 other guys in here, to the front office--but I've had to prove myself . . . my whole career."
"It's a long year, I don't think Foulke is quite ready yet to be the guy we need him to be. (Papelbon's) throwing as well as anyone. By no means is this an indictment of Foulke. He's going to pitch and he's going to be brilliant."
"Yeah, yeah, I understand that. I totally understand that's probably going to happen, but you know what, man, I'm just going to go out there when Tito gives me the rock."
"'THE DOER' IS MERELY A FICTION ADDED TO THE DEED--THE DEED IS EVERYTHING."
"If it was up to me I would probably drop the devil. But it's up to them and I'm going to support the team no matter what."
"St. Pete anything. I just think it's time to recognize where the team plays and the commitment of the community that built the stadium."
"There are some that don't have a positive reaction to the word devil. There are some who don't have a positive reaction to a devil ray. What is a devil ray? If we make a change, it will be something that will be more accessible and appeal to everyone . . . or at least not drive people away."
"It's probably a good idea in this case, primarily because there hasn't been effective branding of that name. Probably within baseball, there's a stronger case for the Devil Rays to change their name than for any other team."
"It could only inject ridicule and scorn because it's a substitute for injecting talent. If you want to inject talent and then change the name, great."
"They're an 8-year-old team and they're kind of starting over. I'm okay with that. We are all enthused at what we've seen so far with the 'Under construction' banner. And they needed to do that. They needed to gain the respect of the community and the baseball community."
ON YOUR WAY UP, UNDERSTAND I'M GOING DOWN
"I basically told them who to tip, how much to tip, where to go to pick up the (team) bus. The good thing is when they need to be somewhere, they're there, and they're there early.
"Here you get one big bed in a nice hotel vs. sharing a room with somebody at La Quinta with two double beds."
"You've got to tip an awful lot. It seems like we're tipping everybody."
"Those aren't aliases. Those are their actual names."
"[It was] the complete Single-A experience."
"I wouldn't tip these guys. I wouldn't tip 'em."
JUMPING SOMEONE ELSE'S TRAIN
"He hit it and kind of looked like he knew what he was doing."
"I hadn't hit one since high school. Guys were laughing because I guess I kind of walked it off a little or something. I didn't run hard. I knew I hit it out of the park, but I wasn't especially trying to jog around the bases. I was in another world after hitting it."
"For a guy that doesn't get a chance to hit a lot, he helped himself out, and it was a little boost for us. We were teasing him about having a double ear-flapped helmet. It worked for him. If he keeps swinging like that and putting down the bunt like he did, you'll see all of us with double ear-flapped helmets on."
HEY EVERYBODY! THIS GUY'S A PHONY!
"Oh, gosh. When you stop and think what these guys have done and what this stuff has done for them, it's amazing, and if you're a pitcher, you have to be upset. People say to me, 'Well, they still have to hit the ball.' No doubt about that, but those fly balls that were on the warning track are now flying into the seats, and that's the difference. It's just not right."
"I mean, here's a guy, Hank Aaron, who exemplified what it meant to be a truly great athlete, and he set his record in an honest and a sincere way and a hard way, and the other guy did it with [power] enhancing drugs."
"No, Hank can't be too happy with this, and he's a good friend of mine, and I think the world of him. We know records are made to be broken, and Hank doesn't have a problem with somebody breaking his record, but, by golly, you have to do it legitimately. These guys are producing phony records with a bunch of phony numbers."
"Believe me, this is going to bring out a lot of names, and that's good. No. 2, we're going to find out a lot of things that we always had in our minds but didn't know for sure, and that's also good."
"What would I do? Whatever they achieved after [they took steroids] would not be counted. They're cheaters."
"I wouldn't say anything, just, 'God bless you.' "
"I knew his father very well. And yes, I think I would owe it not only to Barry, I owe it to his father to respect everything that this young man has accomplished."
THE REST
"I know people are getting impatient. But enjoy baseball right now."
"It's one game. If you want to say we're going to go out and stink up the season, go ahead, but it's not going to ruin my season. If you want me to say we're going to go 0-162, I'm not going to do that. I'm not writing off my season because of Opening Day."
"I really like not strong. It's good for both (men and women). It smells really good."
"It smells like a 20-win season."
"Millar? No. He'd always joke around, 'Don't watch me. Go watch John Olerud.'"
"It's like having calculus the first period of the day. Then the bell rings and it's over."
"It was one of the worst innings I've seen since I put on a uniform, and my first uniform was made out of an onion bag in the Dominican."
"When they give you lemons, you've got to make lemonade, and when they give you oranges, you've got to make orange juice. Tonight, we tried to make tomato juice out of lemon juice or something. It just didn't work out. I don't know if that's a good quote."
"When you get guys out, you're big. When you don't get guys out, you're fat."
"I don't think you deliberately try to get a guy to hit a ball 450 feet and have the wind knock it down."
"You have to feel bad for Barry Bonds. He said his life is in shambles. Well, of course. If you read the warning labels right there on the steroids, it says, 'May cause shambles.' What's the matter with this guy?"
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John Erhardt is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 0 comments have been left for this article.
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