May 1, 2006

The Week in Quotes

April 24-30

by John Erhardt

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"When you are a first, there will be some people that are uncomfortable with the fact that you are a first, and they will try to create non-baseball issues if they have the opportunity. I just see that as people that are uncomfortable with the fact that there's a Hispanic in a position of authority. ... It is what it is."
--Mets GM Omar Minaya, on his perceived Latin-heavy roster (Sacramento Bee)

"You can't blame a guy for trying to put together one of the best teams available. I mean, last year on the free-agent market [Minaya] got the best pitcher and probably the best position player. They just happened to be one from the Dominican and one from Puerto Rico."
--Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado, on the roster

"And this year he just traded for a couple of guys, and when he needed a closer he went out and he got Billy Wagner. Nobody said anything about him getting an American guy."
--Delgado

"The way I look at it, you need 25 guys to win regardless of the color of their skin or where they're from, so I think he's done a great job of putting together a good team."
--Delgado, on Minaya

"I always tell Carlos he's a gringo anyway because he speaks such good English and is so articulate."
--Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca, on Delgado

TEARS AT THE BABE RUTH PARTY

"Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record. We don't celebrate anybody the second or third time in."
--Commissioner Bud Selig, on how MLB will not celebrate formally when Bonds passes Babe Ruth in the home run record book (New York Times)

"I didn't say it wasn't significant. There'll be lots of acknowledgment, but not on behalf of Major League Baseball."
--Selig

"We celebrate new records, that's what we do. We're being consistent. There's nothing to read into that."
--Selig

THE NAME OF THIS THING IS NOT BASEBALL

"Why isn't Joe Crede being called Public Enemy No. 1? Joe Crede is the one that got all the hits."
--White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski, on the likelihood of getting booed when he plays the Angels in Anaheim (Chicago Sun-Times)

"I remember this lady sitting next to the on-deck circle. She looked just like [actress] Courteney Cox -- I don't know if it was her or not. But she kept looking at me and saying, 'You suck, you suck.'"
--Pierzynski, on how he was treated in Game Three after his ALCS Game Two "dropped strike"

"It just breaks my heart. It makes me laugh. I know after the strikeout game, I got booed pretty good. This team got a big chuckle out of it, which was good."
--Pierzynski

"If Escobar is going to hit somebody, he should hit himself. A.J. didn't have anything to do with the dumb [bleep] plays they made. Josh Paul and him, the two dumb [bleep] plays they made and now they're blaming A.J."
--White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, on the Angels' Kelvim Escobar hitting A.J. Pierzynski with a pitch (Arlington Heights Daily Herald)

"You have to be dumb enough to blame it on somebody when you screwed it up. If you're going to blame somebody, look in the mirror. A.J. didn't have anything to do with that. I think that's a low [bleep] way to play baseball."
--Guillen

"It's nobody's fault Josh Paul didn't tag the guy. It's nobody's fault [Escobar] tagged the guy with the wrong hand. Blame yourself. And now you're going to hit somebody for no reason? You can get somebody hurt with no reason."
--Guillen

"I don't know why the [heck] he's hitting me. I just ran to first. Maybe he should hit the guy [Paul] that rolled the ball back to the mound. I didn't do anything to show him up."
--Pierzynski

"[Nauert] told me it was well documented. I don't know where it's documented. The misinformation by umpires is disturbing, very disturbing. We'll have to see who the source of this misinformation is."
--Angels manager Mike Scoscia, on how home plate umpire Paul Nauert issued a warning (Chicago Tribune)

GODS WILL BE GODS

"He does terrible interviews for a reason. Believe me, he knows a lot more about what he does than he lets on. He never wants anyone to know where he's coming from."
--Braves pitcher John Smoltz, on former teammate Greg Maddux (New York Times)

"It's amazing--it looks like he's just playing catch with the mitt, even with the movement on his pitches. The other day, St. Louis has a good hitting lineup, and they were missing balls by a foot. You want the definition of pitching, it's him. You wonder how he gets it done."
--Cubs center fielder Juan Pierre, on Maddux

"Patterns are their confidence."
--Greg Maddux, on why he exploits patterns in hitters

"You try to make their eyes see something they're not."
--Maddux

"High velocity is one of the most overrated things in pitching. I can be going 70-80 miles an hour down the highway for two hours, and I feel like I'm not moving, like I'm going 20. And then you hit that off-ramp and all of a sudden you're slamming on the brakes, because you've been going faster than you thought. Your eyes adjusted to the speed. I think major league hitting is no different. If a guy's throwing 95, by the third at-bat, the hitter's seen 10 to 15 pitches. It's not fast anymore."
--Maddux

"Great card player. You could tell he knew what people had in their hands. And he had a really good idea of how you played."
--Marlins manager Joe Girardi, on Maddux

"It's just four starts."
--Maddux, on his great start to the year

"If we're playing poker, and a flush is supposed to come like one out of 100 hands, and I get a flush in five hands, does that mean it's now one in five? No."
--Maddux

SUCH UNLIKELY WARRIORS

"I guess I regret what I wrote, considering the after-effects."
--Giants infielder Omar Vizquel, who blamed then teammate Jose Mesa for losing the 1997 World Series (Sacramento Bee)

"It's just obvious he wants to hit me. It's over for me, but it's happened the last three times. One was in spring training, but it's still an at-bat. The guy is crazy."
--Vizquel, on Mesa hitting him with a pitch

"It is what it is. Omar knows I'm not crazy. He knows what it's about. What he wrote about me was a shock. We were good friends on the Indians (1994-98). Our lockers were next to each other. We'd go out."
--Mesa

THE REST

"With almost any of our pitchers, we have to be ready to score four or five runs. At least that many."
--Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, on the quality of his rotation (Philadelphia Inquirer)

"It's like a snake. If someone tells me it's dead, I'm going to run over it three times before I believe it. You tell me he's not swinging the bat good; I'll believe it when he's left here and we've been able to handle him."
--Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, on why he won't believe Bonds' struggles (Denver Post)

"In 1971, I was traded from the Caracas Leones to a Dominican League team for a bottle of wine and some cheese. Compared to that, 10,000 baseballs is a pretty good offer."
--former pitcher Charlie Hough, recalling the time Tommy Lasorda offered 10,000 baseballs for Hough (L.A. Times)

"I don't think I'm worth anywhere near that."
--Royals prospect Alex Gordon, on hearing his Topps rookie card is worth $1,300 (New York Daily News)

"All these guys have iPods. They have like 3,000 songs in them, but it's not 3,000 good songs. There aren't 3,000 good songs out there."
--Devil Rays prospect and music critic Elijah Dukes (Baseball America)

"It's tough to make a wide, sweeping statement off such a small sample."
--Red Sox infielder Mark Loretta, on the differences in his performance before and after Coco Crisp went on the DL (Boston Globe)

"That only happens when, you know, like when the stars and the moon go together--what's that called?--yeah, an eclipse."
--Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano, on how often he'll break a bat over his knee (Chicago Sun-Times)

"My mother tells me, 'Don't spit anymore.' Next thing I know, I spit. When things hit the top of your head, you don't hear nobody except that pressure at the top of your head. What's that cartoon where that dude used to have that stuff coming out of the top of his head? That's what it feels like."
--Cubs manager Dusty Baker, on controlling Zambrano's emotions

"We made a mistake on defense. If I hit [Branyan] 100 fungos, he'll make that 99.9 percent of the time."
--Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon, on a Russ Branyan fielding error, demonstrating that defensive statistics can reach a level of precision previously unheard of (Toronto Sun)

John Erhardt is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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