Santana
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:24 pm
NYPD113th January 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hey G Love!
Either one of two thing occured with your post. Either A) your prescription needs to be upped on your reading glasses or B) you were in such a rush to rip Gammons, yiou decide to not actually read the chat.
G LOVE, you said:
No small coincidence Gammons pumps up every prospect that the Red Sox have in their proposal to the Twins.
He drops Lester as “young Pettite”. Coco as “best CF in baseball”. Lowrie as “ready to start at SS for the Sox if Lugo falters”.
OK, now, Gammons said:
“One of the most interesting thing about the winter meetings was that JOHN FARRELL was passionate about his case for Jon Lester becoming their equivalent of a young Pettitte.
AND………
“I could see Billy Beane trading for Crisp and then turning around and trading him before season starts. THE A’S think he’s the best defensive center fielder in game right now.”
NOW THE DOOZY!
G LOVE, you claim that Gammons said that is “ready to start at SS for the Sox if Lugo falters”.
Can you please point out in his chat where he said this, because I cannot find it. I do see where Gammons said:
“If Jed Lowrie is still with them, he should allow them to give Lugo more rest and be a good alternative at SS.”
Sounds like he’s saying the kid could be a nice backup for the immediate future. Real over-the-top stuff G Love!
So two of the things you claim that Gammons said, other people said, and one thing you decided to make up. Wonderful post G Love.
Hey G Love!
Either one of two thing occured with your post. Either A) your prescription needs to be upped on your reading glasses or B) you were in such a rush to rip Gammons, yiou decide to not actually read the chat.
G LOVE, you said:
No small coincidence Gammons pumps up every prospect that the Red Sox have in their proposal to the Twins.
He drops Lester as “young Pettite”. Coco as “best CF in baseball”. Lowrie as “ready to start at SS for the Sox if Lugo falters”.
OK, now, Gammons said:
“One of the most interesting thing about the winter meetings was that JOHN FARRELL was passionate about his case for Jon Lester becoming their equivalent of a young Pettitte.
AND………
“I could see Billy Beane trading for Crisp and then turning around and trading him before season starts. THE A’S think he’s the best defensive center fielder in game right now.”
NOW THE DOOZY!
G LOVE, you claim that Gammons said that is “ready to start at SS for the Sox if Lugo falters”.
Can you please point out in his chat where he said this, because I cannot find it. I do see where Gammons said:
“If Jed Lowrie is still with them, he should allow them to give Lugo more rest and be a good alternative at SS.”
Sounds like he’s saying the kid could be a nice backup for the immediate future. Real over-the-top stuff G Love!
So two of the things you claim that Gammons said, other people said, and one thing you decided to make up. Wonderful post G Love.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:43 pm
From what i have seen, this info should give you info on:
1) hot cold zones
2) info that should help on chase, take and miss ratings
3) ratings on each pitcher's pitches (describing velocity, and overall quality of the pitch)
4) spray charts so you can determine if a hitter is a pull/spray hitter, ground ball/fly ball hitter
5) Hitters attributes including power, speeds, throwing strength, throwing accuracy, defensive range, base stealing, etc
I should warn you that they just uploaded this info and some of it appears to be incomplete. Hopefully, everything should be in place by Opening day
EDIT: changed complete to incomplete.
http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i1464714_Untitled1.png
kgbaseball:
If it gives solid info on #3 and #5, it could definitely be helpful. I'm not convinced changing hot/cold zones makes a difference in the game.
Also, is it only for major leaguers? Are there obscure minor leaguers too?
Just major leaguers...and not 100% of them..although most of them.
1) hot cold zones
2) info that should help on chase, take and miss ratings
3) ratings on each pitcher's pitches (describing velocity, and overall quality of the pitch)
4) spray charts so you can determine if a hitter is a pull/spray hitter, ground ball/fly ball hitter
5) Hitters attributes including power, speeds, throwing strength, throwing accuracy, defensive range, base stealing, etc
I should warn you that they just uploaded this info and some of it appears to be incomplete. Hopefully, everything should be in place by Opening day
EDIT: changed complete to incomplete.
http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i1464714_Untitled1.png
kgbaseball:
If it gives solid info on #3 and #5, it could definitely be helpful. I'm not convinced changing hot/cold zones makes a difference in the game.
Also, is it only for major leaguers? Are there obscure minor leaguers too?
Just major leaguers...and not 100% of them..although most of them.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:51 pm
Roy Schuening
Scouts Grade: 83
http://insider.espn.go.com/nfldraft/draft/tracker/player?id=11963
Strengths: Takes sound angles to blocks and generally gets into good position when drive blocking. Tough and works from the snap to the whistle. Big enough to engulf undersized defenders and can wear defenders down over the course of a game. Footwork is sound when combo blocking defensive lineman up to a linebacker and flashes the ability to get into position at the second level. Shows adequate range for size and flashes the ability to pull effectively. Gets adequate knee bend in pass set and holds ground against bull rushers. Doesn't have an explosive first step but is efficient and gets into pass set quickly. Keeps head up and shows good awareness in pass protection.
Weaknesses: Doesn't get great hand placement, frequently fails to extend arms once in position and struggles to sustain blocks. Fails to deliver a violent initial punch, doesn't roll hips upon contact and isn't going to knock many defenders back. Plays too high at times and could struggle to drive two-gap defenders off the ball at the NFL level. Plays with a narrow base, struggles to adjust to the moving target in space and can lose balance. Can't change directions quickly and struggles to adjust to double moves.
Overall: Schuening arrived at Oregon State in 2003. During the next three seasons (2004-'06) he started 37 consecutive games. Schuening lacks ideal athleticism and explosiveness but he is a relentless drive blocker who can hold his own in pass protection.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:53 pm
Clemens 'swears' in interview he's never used banned substances
In the report, McNamee claims to have injected Clemens with steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001. He said he injected the seven-time Cy Young winner with HGH in 2000, according to the report.
According to CBS, Clemens calls the accusation that he used steroids and HGH "ridiculous" and says he "never" used any banned substances. The interview was conducted last Friday.
Wallace ask Clemens if he swears he didn't used banned substances. "Swear," Clemens responds.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that a lawyer for McNamee said he wouuld sue Clemens if he accuses McNamee of lying in the interview.
"He's got a chance to protect himself," Richard D. Emery, a New York-based lawyer who specializes in libel and defamation actions, told The Times. "We're not going to sue him if he doesn't do it. But if he does it, we're going to sue him."
Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told The Times his client has nothing to hide.
"I believe a client who's telling the truth should tell the world the truth," he said. Of Clemens' "60 Minutes" appearance, Hardin said, "I think [Clemens] expressed himself very emotionally, and it'll give the viewer a chance to look at Roger and make up their mind."
On Thursday, Hardin added: "In his interview with 60 Minutes Roger told the truth. It is that simple. I encourage Mr. McNamee to watch the program."
Shortly after the Mitchell report's release, Clemens issued denials both through Hardin and in a video posted on his Web site.
"Let me be clear, the answer is no. I did not use steroids or human growth hormone, and I've never done so," Clemens said in the video. "I did not provide Brian McNamee with any drugs to inject into my body. Brian McNamee did not inject steroids or human growth hormones into my body."
McNamee's lawyer, Ed Ward, said in December that "[McNamee] stands 100 percent behind the accuracy of the information he provided to Sen. Mitchell."
Shortly after the report was released, Hardin said: "... I am extremely upset that Roger's name was in this report based on the allegations of a troubled and unreliable witness who only came up with names after being threatened with possible prison time."
Also on Thursday, the New York Daily News reported that Hank Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees' senior vice president, said Clemens will not be back in pinstripes.
"I'm not signing Clemens," Steinbrenner told the Daily News in a telephone interview.
Steinbrenner said the team has Andy Pettitte, who is also mentioned in the Mitchell report and who has admitted using performance enhancing drugs, signed for one season.
"Andy is [signed] for one year and he's only 35 and he knows how to pitch in the big games," Steinbrenner said, according to the Daily News. "Roger does, too, but let's face it, he's going to be 46 [in August].
"Pettitte is just as good with the young pitchers, though Clemens was great with the young kids last year. I don't think Roger is going to come back anyway."
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3179745
ESPN.com news services
Updated: January 3, 2008, 4:51 PM ET
Roger Clemens says he was injected with "Lidocaine and B-12" and not steroids or human growth hormone by former trainer Brian McNamee, according to a portion of an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" released Thursday.
"Lidocaine and B-12. It's for my joints, and B-12 I still take today," Clemens told Mike Wallace in the interview, which is scheduled to be shown Sunday night. It is Clemens' first interview since the release of the Mitchell report in December.
Lidocaine and B-12. It's for my joints, and B-12 I still take today.
--Roger Clemens in '60 Minutes' interview
In the report, McNamee claims to have injected Clemens with steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001. He said he injected the seven-time Cy Young winner with HGH in 2000, according to the report.
According to CBS, Clemens calls the accusation that he used steroids and HGH "ridiculous" and says he "never" used any banned substances. The interview was conducted last Friday.
Wallace ask Clemens if he swears he didn't used banned substances. "Swear," Clemens responds.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that a lawyer for McNamee said he wouuld sue Clemens if he accuses McNamee of lying in the interview.
"He's got a chance to protect himself," Richard D. Emery, a New York-based lawyer who specializes in libel and defamation actions, told The Times. "We're not going to sue him if he doesn't do it. But if he does it, we're going to sue him."
Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told The Times his client has nothing to hide.
"I believe a client who's telling the truth should tell the world the truth," he said. Of Clemens' "60 Minutes" appearance, Hardin said, "I think [Clemens] expressed himself very emotionally, and it'll give the viewer a chance to look at Roger and make up their mind."
On Thursday, Hardin added: "In his interview with 60 Minutes Roger told the truth. It is that simple. I encourage Mr. McNamee to watch the program."
Shortly after the Mitchell report's release, Clemens issued denials both through Hardin and in a video posted on his Web site.
"Let me be clear, the answer is no. I did not use steroids or human growth hormone, and I've never done so," Clemens said in the video. "I did not provide Brian McNamee with any drugs to inject into my body. Brian McNamee did not inject steroids or human growth hormones into my body."
McNamee's lawyer, Ed Ward, said in December that "[McNamee] stands 100 percent behind the accuracy of the information he provided to Sen. Mitchell."
Shortly after the report was released, Hardin said: "... I am extremely upset that Roger's name was in this report based on the allegations of a troubled and unreliable witness who only came up with names after being threatened with possible prison time."
Also on Thursday, the New York Daily News reported that Hank Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees' senior vice president, said Clemens will not be back in pinstripes.
"I'm not signing Clemens," Steinbrenner told the Daily News in a telephone interview.
Steinbrenner said the team has Andy Pettitte, who is also mentioned in the Mitchell report and who has admitted using performance enhancing drugs, signed for one season.
"Andy is [signed] for one year and he's only 35 and he knows how to pitch in the big games," Steinbrenner said, according to the Daily News. "Roger does, too, but let's face it, he's going to be 46 [in August].
"Pettitte is just as good with the young pitchers, though Clemens was great with the young kids last year. I don't think Roger is going to come back anyway."
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:58 pm
1. YankeeDudel January 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
flax seed oil or vitamin B12?
2. Mike January 3rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
The first admission. I foresee this as a slippery slope of “well yes, but” statements from the Clemens camp.
3. Jack Ransovy January 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Back to the Santana point there’s is no doubt in my mind that the Yankees should wait on this deal if the twins take it fine we’ll see if it pays out if they decide to keep him the better for us. On the Cano matter the yankees should sign him to a long deal he’s proven himself as a yankee and is about the best 2nd baseman you can get.
4. Stephen January 3rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Apparently B12
5. frits January 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
the b12 defense? really?
6. Stephen January 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
When asked by Wallace if McNamee had ever injected him with any drugs, Clemens responds: “Lidocaine and B-12. It’s for my joints, and B-12 I still take today.”
Clemens calls the accusation “ridiculous” and says he “never” used any banned substances.
“Swear?” asks Wallace.
“[I] swear,” says Clemens.
7. dadofjft January 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Was Miguel Tejada the one injecting him?
8. mel January 3rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Too bad Wallace didn’t ask Roger to swear on his mother’s grave. That would settle the whole thing.
9. jennifer- Hip Hip Jorge January 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Did he call Mcnamee a liar?Should Roger be on the look out for a lawsuit?
10. Rebecca--Optimist Prime--Save the Three Musketeers! January 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
It will not get settled beyond a reasonable doubt, IMO. It wouldn’t be American if that happened.
11. Joey January 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I once had Lidocaine injected into me. Then my dentist filled my cavity.
I think there’s B12 in my multivitamin.
I’m contacting my agent. I stand to become a millionaire!
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Curt Schilling- Ace to Entreprenuer
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:05 pm
Interview with Fat Actress Curt Schilling- Ace to Entreprenuer
[quote]
http://www.wickedlocal.com/maynard/news/x1059343666
Maynard - From the outside, it’s hard to imagine all the creating and designing that’s going on inside the walls of the “Clock Tower” building in Maynard, home to among other ventures, Curt Schilling’s, 38 Studios. Even the door to the meeting room, a locally made castle door, seems to attest to the imaginations hard at work here. Thirty- eight Studios serves as the work place for 38 of the most brilliant, savvy and creative artistic minds found in the modern-day video gaming business. Sci-Fi/fantasy authors, artists including a toy designer, business entrepreneurs and yes, even a world champion pitcher assemble here all with one common goal in mind – to deliver the next frontier in entertainment, to create the next generation of Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). Schilling sat for an interview on Dec. 7.
LVO:The first question I think people want to know the answer to is what brought you to Maynard and specifically to 38 Studios?
CS: Well they actually happened in reverse, the 38 Studios vision, dream, is probably 20 years in the making. I’ve been a computer gamer my whole life and probably 6 or 7 years ago my wife and I were meeting with our financial people, and we were at a place in time when we knew things were going to be okay financially for our family for the rest of our lives and I broached the topic of what I wanted to do when I was done playing. I had no interest in opening up a store with my name on it, or a restaurant or anything like that and I told my financial advisor I said, “ I want to take a shot at making world-changing money” and he kind of laughed. And I said, “I want to take a shot at opening a company that can make enough money that I can change the world with.” And he said, “Well the only prerequisite obviously beyond the budget, would be that you do something you have a passion for.” Outside of the Lord, my family, and baseball, computer gaming is kind of my thing. So, I started to kind of lay the foundation for the company. I had a working relationship with Sony on-line entertainment at the time and got to know them, got to know people in the industry started to research the industry and I kind of took it like I approach starting a baseball game from a preparation standpoint. I would go and do little PR jaunts for them and I would literally take a notebook with me. I’d take notes on things… from everything from the lay out of the developers cubes in the building, to how the teams work together or didn’t work together, to my vision of management and staff interacting and all those things and then tried to get a feel for what it was like. I knew coming in, that I would do it drastically different because this has turned into an upscale sweatshop industry, where sixteen hour days for months on end is the norm, when it comes to the crunch time of producing a product. And, you know, I’ve always believed that great companies don’t make great things, great people do. From the telephone, to the light bulb, to all of it, none of those were developed within a business model, they were developed by incredibly creative people, you know, brainstorming. So you need to create an environment that allows people to realize their God-given talents and then on top of that you need to put leadership in place that pushes them to places they never A, dreamed they could go or B, never thought about going. So you know, I’m way past answering your question, but … you understand that if you build the best sailing boat in the world and you put a crew that doesn’t know how to sail a ship you can’t leave the dock…It’s always about the people it’s not about the technology or the idea, it always comes back to the people. So, I knew that building this company would be building a second family number one and that all of the business terms, the risk mitigation in the business is not in technology, it’s in people and so I invested in a core team of people that I knew would ride through this journey because it’s going to be incredibly tumultuous. It’s gonna have a lot of ups and downs… Redefining what people see as lose and failure, I think, is a challenge because in baseball you play close to 200 games a year. You win some. You lose some, but people equate failure and lose as the same thing and it’s not. They’re two entirely different things. You have things that happen in your life everyday where you win or lose. Failure- you only fail something if you quit. And knowing that we’re not going to quit means we’re going to publish a game. Now, so if that’s a given - if we’re going to publish a game, then that doesn’t separate us from anybody else. Everybody, everybody’s publishing games. To be the best in the world, to me is the benchmark… So you create this culture, we’ve created this culture here, led by the President Brett Close it’s just off the charts. It’s incredibly fun.
LVO: And Maynard? Were you looking for something that was in close proximity?
CS: No, I accidentally found it. We looked all over the place. We found a couple different places ….we almost found this the same way we found our house which was by accident. It was just, “Hey there’s a property opened up over here and it’s about 45, 50 minutes from home.” You know I never had to commute in traffic in my life, so I come to the office at 7 o’clock every morning and there’s traffic and it’s weird, but I walked in here and this was…this is it. This is where we belong. Our goal is to hopefully someday occupy this whole place.
LVO: Now the name was formerly Green Monster Gamesand then it became 38 Studios. Was that a couple years ago?
CS: No, we’re a year old now. October of last year, we literally…this is the room the business started in. There were eleven of us….
LVO: It’s a very loud room right now. (Heating pipes clanging in background…..)
CS: Yeah, yeah. By law we couldn’t leave the room because they were still working on renovating. So we literally were in this room everyday for the first six weeks laying the foundations of the company. But Green Monster Gameswas the initial name and at the end of the day, given the vision of the company, it really pigeonholed us and put us in a nitch that we didn’t belong. So some of the people thought to go with 38 Studios as the tie in. They liked the name and there’s that tie in to the number but you know at the end of the day people in the computer game industry have no idea what 38 means. So that’s fine. I mean it will stand on its on merits.
LVO: I read on your blog that you yourself really, enjoy playing these games. Are you doing that while traveling?
CS: I’m playing MMO’s – the massively multiplayer online games…One of the things that you have as a professional athlete is an immense amount of free time. Most of that is when you’re traveling. I’m married with children so the social life that I might have had when I was twenty or twenty-one no longer exists. And we’re in a culture and in a day and age when going out into the public can result in bad things even if you don’t have bad intentions. So you know what? You remove any doubts any chance of something like that happening by just not doing it. And, some people may say, “Well geeze that’s a rough way to live.” Well it’s not. During the season I have commitments to keep and usually as we travel I’ll have business meetings around the cities we’re traveling in and I’ll keep in touch with everybody on the internet but it’s what I do. These games allow me to literally hang out with my kids as well, because they’re home and they get online and we’ll play together and so it’s just another little bit of a connection for us.
LVO: Is there a game that you particularly remember playing that you loved - the one that got you hooked?
CS: Well I mean the first game I ever played that really got me hooked was called Ever Quest. That was the game that kind of sealed the deal for me. Now my kids and I play a game called World of Warcraft. All of my boys are playing, my daughter plays and I’ve never gotten Shonda to take the plunge (laughter) but that’s the game of choice right now.
LVO: What would the plans be for the future here? What do you foresee?
CS: We’re in preproduction of our first title.
LVO: Okay and what’s the date looking like?
CS: Well...it’s not something…
LVO: Hard to tell?
CS: Yeah, well we know, but we don’t talk about it right now. We have a target date. We have a budget and this is really a Hollywood type industry from a resources standpoint. It costs as much to put one of these games out from a development length and dollars standpoint as it does to put out a major motion picture. Your talking budgets between 50 and 100 million dollars. We’re in a series B round of fundraising. This company’s fully self-funded at this point which is a huge advantage for us because I will retain ownership of the company and we will retain ownership of the intellectual property we’re creating. So you need to find strategic partners to do that with. And you go out and you talk to the Comcasts of the world and the AT&T’s and you know the companies that are seeing the game space now as an incredibly large revenue generator and are late to the party but we’re offering some companies a chance to get in on the top floor at some point.
[quote]
http://www.wickedlocal.com/maynard/news/x1059343666
Maynard - From the outside, it’s hard to imagine all the creating and designing that’s going on inside the walls of the “Clock Tower” building in Maynard, home to among other ventures, Curt Schilling’s, 38 Studios. Even the door to the meeting room, a locally made castle door, seems to attest to the imaginations hard at work here. Thirty- eight Studios serves as the work place for 38 of the most brilliant, savvy and creative artistic minds found in the modern-day video gaming business. Sci-Fi/fantasy authors, artists including a toy designer, business entrepreneurs and yes, even a world champion pitcher assemble here all with one common goal in mind – to deliver the next frontier in entertainment, to create the next generation of Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). Schilling sat for an interview on Dec. 7.
LVO:The first question I think people want to know the answer to is what brought you to Maynard and specifically to 38 Studios?
CS: Well they actually happened in reverse, the 38 Studios vision, dream, is probably 20 years in the making. I’ve been a computer gamer my whole life and probably 6 or 7 years ago my wife and I were meeting with our financial people, and we were at a place in time when we knew things were going to be okay financially for our family for the rest of our lives and I broached the topic of what I wanted to do when I was done playing. I had no interest in opening up a store with my name on it, or a restaurant or anything like that and I told my financial advisor I said, “ I want to take a shot at making world-changing money” and he kind of laughed. And I said, “I want to take a shot at opening a company that can make enough money that I can change the world with.” And he said, “Well the only prerequisite obviously beyond the budget, would be that you do something you have a passion for.” Outside of the Lord, my family, and baseball, computer gaming is kind of my thing. So, I started to kind of lay the foundation for the company. I had a working relationship with Sony on-line entertainment at the time and got to know them, got to know people in the industry started to research the industry and I kind of took it like I approach starting a baseball game from a preparation standpoint. I would go and do little PR jaunts for them and I would literally take a notebook with me. I’d take notes on things… from everything from the lay out of the developers cubes in the building, to how the teams work together or didn’t work together, to my vision of management and staff interacting and all those things and then tried to get a feel for what it was like. I knew coming in, that I would do it drastically different because this has turned into an upscale sweatshop industry, where sixteen hour days for months on end is the norm, when it comes to the crunch time of producing a product. And, you know, I’ve always believed that great companies don’t make great things, great people do. From the telephone, to the light bulb, to all of it, none of those were developed within a business model, they were developed by incredibly creative people, you know, brainstorming. So you need to create an environment that allows people to realize their God-given talents and then on top of that you need to put leadership in place that pushes them to places they never A, dreamed they could go or B, never thought about going. So you know, I’m way past answering your question, but … you understand that if you build the best sailing boat in the world and you put a crew that doesn’t know how to sail a ship you can’t leave the dock…It’s always about the people it’s not about the technology or the idea, it always comes back to the people. So, I knew that building this company would be building a second family number one and that all of the business terms, the risk mitigation in the business is not in technology, it’s in people and so I invested in a core team of people that I knew would ride through this journey because it’s going to be incredibly tumultuous. It’s gonna have a lot of ups and downs… Redefining what people see as lose and failure, I think, is a challenge because in baseball you play close to 200 games a year. You win some. You lose some, but people equate failure and lose as the same thing and it’s not. They’re two entirely different things. You have things that happen in your life everyday where you win or lose. Failure- you only fail something if you quit. And knowing that we’re not going to quit means we’re going to publish a game. Now, so if that’s a given - if we’re going to publish a game, then that doesn’t separate us from anybody else. Everybody, everybody’s publishing games. To be the best in the world, to me is the benchmark… So you create this culture, we’ve created this culture here, led by the President Brett Close it’s just off the charts. It’s incredibly fun.
LVO: And Maynard? Were you looking for something that was in close proximity?
CS: No, I accidentally found it. We looked all over the place. We found a couple different places ….we almost found this the same way we found our house which was by accident. It was just, “Hey there’s a property opened up over here and it’s about 45, 50 minutes from home.” You know I never had to commute in traffic in my life, so I come to the office at 7 o’clock every morning and there’s traffic and it’s weird, but I walked in here and this was…this is it. This is where we belong. Our goal is to hopefully someday occupy this whole place.
LVO: Now the name was formerly Green Monster Gamesand then it became 38 Studios. Was that a couple years ago?
CS: No, we’re a year old now. October of last year, we literally…this is the room the business started in. There were eleven of us….
LVO: It’s a very loud room right now. (Heating pipes clanging in background…..)
CS: Yeah, yeah. By law we couldn’t leave the room because they were still working on renovating. So we literally were in this room everyday for the first six weeks laying the foundations of the company. But Green Monster Gameswas the initial name and at the end of the day, given the vision of the company, it really pigeonholed us and put us in a nitch that we didn’t belong. So some of the people thought to go with 38 Studios as the tie in. They liked the name and there’s that tie in to the number but you know at the end of the day people in the computer game industry have no idea what 38 means. So that’s fine. I mean it will stand on its on merits.
LVO: I read on your blog that you yourself really, enjoy playing these games. Are you doing that while traveling?
CS: I’m playing MMO’s – the massively multiplayer online games…One of the things that you have as a professional athlete is an immense amount of free time. Most of that is when you’re traveling. I’m married with children so the social life that I might have had when I was twenty or twenty-one no longer exists. And we’re in a culture and in a day and age when going out into the public can result in bad things even if you don’t have bad intentions. So you know what? You remove any doubts any chance of something like that happening by just not doing it. And, some people may say, “Well geeze that’s a rough way to live.” Well it’s not. During the season I have commitments to keep and usually as we travel I’ll have business meetings around the cities we’re traveling in and I’ll keep in touch with everybody on the internet but it’s what I do. These games allow me to literally hang out with my kids as well, because they’re home and they get online and we’ll play together and so it’s just another little bit of a connection for us.
LVO: Is there a game that you particularly remember playing that you loved - the one that got you hooked?
CS: Well I mean the first game I ever played that really got me hooked was called Ever Quest. That was the game that kind of sealed the deal for me. Now my kids and I play a game called World of Warcraft. All of my boys are playing, my daughter plays and I’ve never gotten Shonda to take the plunge (laughter) but that’s the game of choice right now.
LVO: What would the plans be for the future here? What do you foresee?
CS: We’re in preproduction of our first title.
LVO: Okay and what’s the date looking like?
CS: Well...it’s not something…
LVO: Hard to tell?
CS: Yeah, well we know, but we don’t talk about it right now. We have a target date. We have a budget and this is really a Hollywood type industry from a resources standpoint. It costs as much to put one of these games out from a development length and dollars standpoint as it does to put out a major motion picture. Your talking budgets between 50 and 100 million dollars. We’re in a series B round of fundraising. This company’s fully self-funded at this point which is a huge advantage for us because I will retain ownership of the company and we will retain ownership of the intellectual property we’re creating. So you need to find strategic partners to do that with. And you go out and you talk to the Comcasts of the world and the AT&T’s and you know the companies that are seeing the game space now as an incredibly large revenue generator and are late to the party but we’re offering some companies a chance to get in on the top floor at some point.
Last edited by on Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:05 pm
LVO: Before we move onto a little bit about baseball it’s important to note that you and your wife Shonda have donated amazing amounts of time to a lot of the charitable organizations which we’ll get to as well, but it also brings up the question that many people have asked me when they heard that I was doing this interview – “How is he able to balance being a businessman, pitching at the top of his game in the top division of baseball, writing on his blog, being so devoted to his fans, donating time to his numerous charities and being such a family and faith-filled guy?” How do you do it?
CS: You know, I’m not great at any one aspect of it. I do what I can do when I can do it.
The easiest way I’ve found is to really never give yourself a choice. When I’m here I have a job to do. You know the fatherhood thing, the husband thing is always a part of all of those things. But you have to have an incredibly strong wife, a rock at home to keep things in order. You know just being a professional ball player takes an incredibly different woman to live that life. I really never give myself choices, when I’m here I have a job to do, I’m focused on that. When we’re at a charity event your focused…I just focus on the moment at hand and you know I sit back at times and wonder if I’m missing stuff because the days fly and there’s always something to do and it’s turned into a situation now, where the off season is busier than the regular season and so finding time… Today it’s a sequence of events. I have to be home at 4:15 for a Christmas card shoot, followed by an ABC Christmas interview, followed by a charity dinner at the home. And, everyday is kinda like that. And Shonda kind of reigns me in every now and then, says you know, “slow down, slow down.” But, the balancing aspect of it is not really an issue just because I don’t ever look at it like that. I do the best I can do with what I am given at the current time. And if there’s passion and love and concern for human beings it all works out.
LVO: Now you’re a man who’s also very public about your faith. How has your faith guided you in setting your goals and priorities and helped you in times of stress?
CS: You know faith makes everything very very easy from the stand point of I rarely, if ever, and I would challenge myself to come up with the last time, get worked up about stuff. You know the heat of battle competition on the field, yeah, I get adrenaline and excited but I don’t get worked up over things. I’m the most optimistic human being you’ll ever meet in your life. I am always and have always, I believe, saw the inherent good in everybody whether that was the right thing or wrong thing to do with people, it’s the only way I know. I’m very very comfortable with who I am. I know I have immense flaws but that is one of the things that defines us as human beings. My faith makes life easy because I’m here for the time allotted and if I wake up tomorrow I’m thankful for the day I had and something new and incredible was going to happen that day. I think what it’s also done is it’s really stopped me from ever asking why things happen? Because as a Christian there are times when you’ll look at someone else’s situation and you’ll wonder how could that happen to so and so and then you look at things that have happened in your life and you think to yourself….I’ll give you an example. When I got traded to Arizona. That was probably the one place my wife did not want to go. And, we had a very large disagreement about the move. I kind of had a no trade clause and so I could pick where I wanted to go. I slipped Arizona in there kind of at the last moment. Unbeknownst to her, it happened and it came out of nowhere for her. She was not happy. It turned out to be the greatest thing ever but you know in a situation where we were …there’s some adversity, my wife goes to Arizona with me and within a month, she’s diagnosed with skin cancer in a situation where doctors had been looking at her for six months saying “Ah – you know what? Don’t worry about it.” And the first doctor in Arizona that saw it said, “You need to have this taken off immediately.” If we don’t go to Arizona what happens? My wife probably isn’t here. So, out of everything comes a result. I’m smart enough to know, that I’m not smart enough to try and figure it out. It just happens. You let it happen and out of every experience comes a lesson and if you’re stubborn you miss it and if you’re not, you get it. …It never comes when you want it. It never comes how you want it. It comes how it’s suppose to come. Faith to me is just really kind of unloading everything that burdens you from a worry stand point and saying, “Alright? You know what? I’ll let You deal with it and You’re going to deal the hand You need to deal me and You’re not going to deal me a hand I can’t play cause You told me in the bible that You’ll never put something on me that I can’t withstand. And so it really does make things a lot easier.
CS: You know, I’m not great at any one aspect of it. I do what I can do when I can do it.
The easiest way I’ve found is to really never give yourself a choice. When I’m here I have a job to do. You know the fatherhood thing, the husband thing is always a part of all of those things. But you have to have an incredibly strong wife, a rock at home to keep things in order. You know just being a professional ball player takes an incredibly different woman to live that life. I really never give myself choices, when I’m here I have a job to do, I’m focused on that. When we’re at a charity event your focused…I just focus on the moment at hand and you know I sit back at times and wonder if I’m missing stuff because the days fly and there’s always something to do and it’s turned into a situation now, where the off season is busier than the regular season and so finding time… Today it’s a sequence of events. I have to be home at 4:15 for a Christmas card shoot, followed by an ABC Christmas interview, followed by a charity dinner at the home. And, everyday is kinda like that. And Shonda kind of reigns me in every now and then, says you know, “slow down, slow down.” But, the balancing aspect of it is not really an issue just because I don’t ever look at it like that. I do the best I can do with what I am given at the current time. And if there’s passion and love and concern for human beings it all works out.
LVO: Now you’re a man who’s also very public about your faith. How has your faith guided you in setting your goals and priorities and helped you in times of stress?
CS: You know faith makes everything very very easy from the stand point of I rarely, if ever, and I would challenge myself to come up with the last time, get worked up about stuff. You know the heat of battle competition on the field, yeah, I get adrenaline and excited but I don’t get worked up over things. I’m the most optimistic human being you’ll ever meet in your life. I am always and have always, I believe, saw the inherent good in everybody whether that was the right thing or wrong thing to do with people, it’s the only way I know. I’m very very comfortable with who I am. I know I have immense flaws but that is one of the things that defines us as human beings. My faith makes life easy because I’m here for the time allotted and if I wake up tomorrow I’m thankful for the day I had and something new and incredible was going to happen that day. I think what it’s also done is it’s really stopped me from ever asking why things happen? Because as a Christian there are times when you’ll look at someone else’s situation and you’ll wonder how could that happen to so and so and then you look at things that have happened in your life and you think to yourself….I’ll give you an example. When I got traded to Arizona. That was probably the one place my wife did not want to go. And, we had a very large disagreement about the move. I kind of had a no trade clause and so I could pick where I wanted to go. I slipped Arizona in there kind of at the last moment. Unbeknownst to her, it happened and it came out of nowhere for her. She was not happy. It turned out to be the greatest thing ever but you know in a situation where we were …there’s some adversity, my wife goes to Arizona with me and within a month, she’s diagnosed with skin cancer in a situation where doctors had been looking at her for six months saying “Ah – you know what? Don’t worry about it.” And the first doctor in Arizona that saw it said, “You need to have this taken off immediately.” If we don’t go to Arizona what happens? My wife probably isn’t here. So, out of everything comes a result. I’m smart enough to know, that I’m not smart enough to try and figure it out. It just happens. You let it happen and out of every experience comes a lesson and if you’re stubborn you miss it and if you’re not, you get it. …It never comes when you want it. It never comes how you want it. It comes how it’s suppose to come. Faith to me is just really kind of unloading everything that burdens you from a worry stand point and saying, “Alright? You know what? I’ll let You deal with it and You’re going to deal the hand You need to deal me and You’re not going to deal me a hand I can’t play cause You told me in the bible that You’ll never put something on me that I can’t withstand. And so it really does make things a lot easier.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:06 pm
LVO: This is another question that’s been asked, “Do you personally feel that with fame comes responsibility and if so, what do you see that responsibility as entailing?”
CS: I absolutely believe that we have a responsibility to our teammates, to the organization and to the fan base to represent all three of those in a respectful way. I think there’s a responsibility to the fans to a degree. I think we’re in a time and place when fans believe they’re entitled to everything from an access standpoint. We’ve gotten around that. The responsibility thing… for me a lot of it is just trying, sometimes I think too hard, to make people realize that outside of my God given talent we are no different. No different. You know I have those days when my kids are sick and I’m miserable. And everything that you have in your life, I have in mine, just in different ways. But people believe that the size of your paycheck dictates how you’re suppose to feel and nothing can be further from the truth. So the responsibility ...people want to make a point to tell you at times, “You know I can’t think of someone that I would want my kid to emulate more than you and I’m so proud that you’re my son’s role model.” And I look back at the way I grew up and although I idolized baseball players and athletes, no one was ever the iconic figure that my father was. And my father was retired from the army,…he wasn’t a star, but he was the embodiment of everything I ever wanted to be. When I became a husband and I became a father, the goals were easy for me. I wanted my kids and my family to think just a sliver of me in the way I thought about my dad.
LVO: As far as pitching…. You’re in a very high stress job out there. How do you keep your cool before, during and after the game?
CS: Before the game I’m not cool. I’m probably as nervous as anybody by far.
LVO: So what do you do?
CS: I just focus on getting prepared and I spend those days preparing for the game and once the game starts that’s the easy part. The game for me, that’s what I do. It’s like when you’re writing. When you’re sitting at your desk writing that’s your element. I’m in my element on the mound. There’s stress, but it’s not stress, there’s a tension an adrenaline that comes with competing. There’s the ups if you win the downs if you lose but you know I’m probably by far more nervous than anybody on the day I pitch. Because you set a standard and it’s not something that ….you can ever walk away from...it’s there every time…people expect things from you. And you set a standard for yourself and a bar for yourself that has to be met every time and your playing against the best players in the world. And so it’s an incredible challenge to maintain that consistency.
LVO: And afterwards?
CS: I get on-line and play when I’m on the road. I don’t sleep much on the nights I pitch. This year I did a lot of blogging after I pitched breaking down the games. I have four kids so the whole bring you back down to earth thing is in your face and very easy to get when you’re at home.
LVO: You touched upon this earlier but several people have asked me and I wondered this too. What is the medal that you where around your neck? They noticed that before you go to the mound usually you turn away for a bit and grab it ….”
CS: Yeah, we’ll it’s a gift that I was given. And the cross symbolizes…the mesh wire that is holding the cross together represents the crown of thorns. The steel represents the spikes that were driven through His hands and the cord that ties it is the cord that was used to bind His hands and feet. And the pregame thing is prayer. I say a prayer before every start. I find a lot of people…ask the question, “What do you think God is going to like one person over another on the baseball field? You can understand it to a sense,but I’m never praying to win. There might be some times when I’m struggling when I might ask for a little help but for the most part it’s praying about being able to do the thing that He gave me the ability to do. Praying for the safety of all the players involved in the game and just thanking Him for the chance to experience what I’m about to experience. You know step-up on that mound, and baseball is very different. When you have the ball on the mound as a pitcher everybody’s watching you and it’s an incredible rush. I’ve said it before I’m blessed so far beyond anything I could ever dream of, a beautiful healthy wife, four incredibly beautiful healthy kids and a job that is not really a job. I get to do the thing that I love most in life for a living. All the things that come with that are gravy but every five days I get to step on the mound at Fenway Park and pitch for a nation of 15, 20 million people.
LV: Now your dad is no longer with us right?
CS: Right.
LVO: Do you feel that he continues to influence your life?
CS: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I leave a ticket for my dad every game that I ever pitch.
LVO: You do?
CS: Since 1988, I’ve left a ticket every game I’ve ever pitched. I was with my father when he had an aortic aneurysm and I was actually getting ready to take him to the airport to go back home to Colorado. I was separated from my family at the time. They were in Colorado waiting for him to come back. He died. He was on life support and I had to make the decision to...to…but that experience while it is by far in a way the most horrible thing that I’ve ever seen in my life, also made me realize that I had learned a lot from him because from the time he had the heart attack until he went to the hospital, I gave him CPR, I called the ambulance I was with him the entire way and I was totally calm. I was, as he would hope I was. But, I know that someday he and I will talk again and the ticket was and is a way to make sure he knows that everything that’s happening to me is a direct result of who he was. And so it’s a pretty cool thing for me to be able to write his name on the pass list every five days. Some of the biggest games of my life….I’ve learned more from my dad from the day he died till now then I did when he was alive.
LVO: That’s interesting.
CS: I can remember sitting down on the bench before game seven of the World Series in 2001 and I’m pitching against the Yankees in Arizona and Roger Clemens, and all the side stories that went along with this game. And, I always do the things I do on the day I pitch on the same cycle, the same routine, and I can remember… I’ll have conversations with him in a sense that, you know, that dialogue you have with someone when they’re not around where you know what their response is going to be. And it was like I was pretty worked up and I can remember him saying, in my head saying, “Seriously what’s the big deal? You’re gonna go out in about a half hour and your gonna take the ball and do what you’ve done your whole life. And your gonna pitch and then the game will be over and you’ll win or lose but you’ve done everything you can possibly do to be ready for this game. So, at some point you have to enjoy these things. You may never get here again.”
LVO: Just what you needed to hear.
CS: Yeah. I’m going to go out and I’m going to pitch and I’m going to have fun. He’s done that a lot for me over the last 19 years.
LVO: Your Red Sox teammates are actually like true family members in that like with actual families, you don’t have a choice as to who your siblings are going to be and just like in actual families you often get very different personalities mixed in there under the same roof. Can you tell me some of the roles that your teammates play in that mix? Is there someone playing the older wiser brother, the comic relief?
CS: One of the things about that is that this is a very different household playing in Boston. There are external pressures and external things that don’t happen anywhere else so you have to be a little bit different from an equipment standpoint mentally to play here. We have, every team has characters that play the role, the leader, the funny guy. On this team there are a group of guys. Jason is the leader, not the vocal leader. He’s the guy who goes out and plays the game the way it’s suppose to be played and he really leads by example. There are a couple of us who are more vocal and comfortable being vocal about it, who I think, say the things that need to be said when no one else will say them. You also have to have a manager who allows that to happen and Terry Francona is very good about allowing the clubhouse to police itself. Doug Mirabelli is the funny guy. Eric Hinske's the funny guy. We got a ton of great guys from a comic relief standpoint but everybody fills a nitch. With the amount of cultures that are put together every year and the amount of backgrounds that we have, it’s essential that you have the ability to get in somebody’s face and not have them take it personal when it’s not
LVO: Why do you feel that the combination works so well in that it had you bring home the World Championship again this season?
CS: Number one is talent... It’s an incredibly talented group of guys, that’s the first thing you have to have. Number two, you have to be semi injury-free. Everyone has to stay healthy. You have to have depth. You have to have a thorough blend of talent all the way up and down your roster cause everybody’s going to contribute. But I think it starts at the top. You have to have somebody playing here who doesn’t panic, who doesn’t act and react to the media because when the manager shows that vulnerability is seeps into the clubhouse. And, Terry Francona is the best I’ve ever seen at it. He takes it with a grain of salt here like nobody that I’ve ever been around. This media can be burdensome at times and invasive and he doesn’t allow that to fester in the clubhouse. You know if he feels like something is potentially going to get out of hand he’s the guy that has the meeting to stop it before it happens. So it does it starts at the top. The ownership Mr.Luchino, Mr. Henry, Mr. Werner make it very clear that they’re committed to not just us but our families, which is huge.
LVO: Playing for Red Sox Nation, what does it mean to you?
CS: It’s one of those things. I can’t fathom my career ending without this experience. I mean this just makes me realize that the years I spent in baseball before this were incredible and fun but there is no other place …. This is Notre Dame football, Packer football, Yankee baseball, Lakers basketball you know, Montreal hockey all rolled in to one. I said when I came here in New England it’s Catholicism and Red Sox baseball and not necessarily in that order. The thing that really kinda hit me, knocked me off my feet when I first signed here was that fact that it was Thanksgiving in 2003 and there were people in New England who were saying their Thanksgiving prayer. I was part of that prayer. I mean that’s not the Arizona Diamondbacks or the San Diego Padres, that’s a whole different level. You come here and experience it and you realize these people are personally invested in you and your life. What you do off the field and how you act matters to them. And so there’s a level of accountably that comes with playing in this organization that a lot of other teams don’t have and I like it! I can see where it might be a challenge when I was a younger player, but at this stage in my career it’s something that I absolutely cherish and it made the decision to come back here to me, a no brainer.
LVO: What did if feel like to win the World Series again? Was there a memorable moment in the series that stands out in your mind?
CS: There’s no singular memories as much this time around as there were just visions of you know Josh setting the tone in the post season with that first start in Anaheim… This was the first World Championship team of the three that I’ve been on where I didn’t think it was gonna happen, up until it happened. Up until we made the last out in game seven against Cleveland, I wasn’t sure. You know it didn’t feel the same, so in a way it made it just as special as the last one because when we went in to play Colorado, you know with the eight days off and we played that first game and it just seemed very clear that we were incredibly sharp and focused and they were knocking some of the rust off. In a seven game series you don’t have any time to catch up so you know I felt like whoever was going to come out of the National League was going to be at a disadvantage this year. From a special stand point they’re all special . I’ve heard multiple people say this. I have three World Series Championships and they are like your kids. They’re all incredibly special for their own reasons.
LVO: I know that Jonathan Papelbon was on LettermanHalloween night because I saw him, and he was speaking of David Ortiz giving a speech to you. Do you feel that that was somewhat of a defining moment?
CS: Well there were a couple of us that sat up and talked and you know the thing that that meeting did and the point that I tried to make in that meeting was that “We do not have to come back and win three games in a row against Cleveland. We have to go tonight and we have to win the first inning. We have to win this game one pitch, one out, one at bat, one inning at a time. And if we can win the first inning or play to a tie, then we win the second inning. When you can get a group of people that are that talented focused on the moment – all of them – you can’t get beat. It was the formula that we used in 2004. We had this meeting in 2004 down three “o” and it was the thing I said at that time. This is all about the moment. Winning the pitch, every at bat, every pitch grinding out every single inning, everything you do, doing it to perfection. And understanding that you know, each game is it’s own little series. When you get guys, that again, that are that talented and then a fan base like this it makes it kind of easy to do something like that, whereas other teams might have trouble focusing.
LVO: How about Mike Lowell? Were you worried that it might not get done?
CS: Yeah.
LVO: Were you sopsychedwhen you heard?
CS: I was beyond ecstatic. Mike is a man’s man. That guy …I was worried about him possibly going to New York, for the reason that… not because it’s the Yankees but because Mike is one of those guys who comes in and stabilizes a clubhouse. His presence and his experience are infecting. You catch it. And he is a guy who can come into this market, like any other market, and there’s a sense of calmness around him. He plays the game right. He plays the game hard. He’s damn good and he doesn’t take it to a level that’s unattainable. He makes you understand it….as an everyday player. I’m not the kind of guy that can be a leader on a team, in a sense, because I’m a pitcher. I play once every five days. I have no idea what the physical grind is for those guys that play every day. So you need somebody like him. And, when you don’t have him it’s very apparent that there’s a whole somewhere in the chemistry of a club. And you know that was such a huge thing. And the fact is, that the Red Sox….they changed….after the 04 team a lot of guys left. It was very clear and you know you understand it, a lot of guys left because the front office made it very clear, “We’re not going to be married to a team that did win it. We are trying to put together a team that can win it. And we don’t believe that these are the right guys going forward.” Now, you know obviously our opinions differ because this is family. Trading away and letting family members go, but, they had the same approach this time around but they looked at the pieces differently and they realized that these guys were going to be a big part of us going ahead.
CS: I absolutely believe that we have a responsibility to our teammates, to the organization and to the fan base to represent all three of those in a respectful way. I think there’s a responsibility to the fans to a degree. I think we’re in a time and place when fans believe they’re entitled to everything from an access standpoint. We’ve gotten around that. The responsibility thing… for me a lot of it is just trying, sometimes I think too hard, to make people realize that outside of my God given talent we are no different. No different. You know I have those days when my kids are sick and I’m miserable. And everything that you have in your life, I have in mine, just in different ways. But people believe that the size of your paycheck dictates how you’re suppose to feel and nothing can be further from the truth. So the responsibility ...people want to make a point to tell you at times, “You know I can’t think of someone that I would want my kid to emulate more than you and I’m so proud that you’re my son’s role model.” And I look back at the way I grew up and although I idolized baseball players and athletes, no one was ever the iconic figure that my father was. And my father was retired from the army,…he wasn’t a star, but he was the embodiment of everything I ever wanted to be. When I became a husband and I became a father, the goals were easy for me. I wanted my kids and my family to think just a sliver of me in the way I thought about my dad.
LVO: As far as pitching…. You’re in a very high stress job out there. How do you keep your cool before, during and after the game?
CS: Before the game I’m not cool. I’m probably as nervous as anybody by far.
LVO: So what do you do?
CS: I just focus on getting prepared and I spend those days preparing for the game and once the game starts that’s the easy part. The game for me, that’s what I do. It’s like when you’re writing. When you’re sitting at your desk writing that’s your element. I’m in my element on the mound. There’s stress, but it’s not stress, there’s a tension an adrenaline that comes with competing. There’s the ups if you win the downs if you lose but you know I’m probably by far more nervous than anybody on the day I pitch. Because you set a standard and it’s not something that ….you can ever walk away from...it’s there every time…people expect things from you. And you set a standard for yourself and a bar for yourself that has to be met every time and your playing against the best players in the world. And so it’s an incredible challenge to maintain that consistency.
LVO: And afterwards?
CS: I get on-line and play when I’m on the road. I don’t sleep much on the nights I pitch. This year I did a lot of blogging after I pitched breaking down the games. I have four kids so the whole bring you back down to earth thing is in your face and very easy to get when you’re at home.
LVO: You touched upon this earlier but several people have asked me and I wondered this too. What is the medal that you where around your neck? They noticed that before you go to the mound usually you turn away for a bit and grab it ….”
CS: Yeah, we’ll it’s a gift that I was given. And the cross symbolizes…the mesh wire that is holding the cross together represents the crown of thorns. The steel represents the spikes that were driven through His hands and the cord that ties it is the cord that was used to bind His hands and feet. And the pregame thing is prayer. I say a prayer before every start. I find a lot of people…ask the question, “What do you think God is going to like one person over another on the baseball field? You can understand it to a sense,but I’m never praying to win. There might be some times when I’m struggling when I might ask for a little help but for the most part it’s praying about being able to do the thing that He gave me the ability to do. Praying for the safety of all the players involved in the game and just thanking Him for the chance to experience what I’m about to experience. You know step-up on that mound, and baseball is very different. When you have the ball on the mound as a pitcher everybody’s watching you and it’s an incredible rush. I’ve said it before I’m blessed so far beyond anything I could ever dream of, a beautiful healthy wife, four incredibly beautiful healthy kids and a job that is not really a job. I get to do the thing that I love most in life for a living. All the things that come with that are gravy but every five days I get to step on the mound at Fenway Park and pitch for a nation of 15, 20 million people.
LV: Now your dad is no longer with us right?
CS: Right.
LVO: Do you feel that he continues to influence your life?
CS: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I leave a ticket for my dad every game that I ever pitch.
LVO: You do?
CS: Since 1988, I’ve left a ticket every game I’ve ever pitched. I was with my father when he had an aortic aneurysm and I was actually getting ready to take him to the airport to go back home to Colorado. I was separated from my family at the time. They were in Colorado waiting for him to come back. He died. He was on life support and I had to make the decision to...to…but that experience while it is by far in a way the most horrible thing that I’ve ever seen in my life, also made me realize that I had learned a lot from him because from the time he had the heart attack until he went to the hospital, I gave him CPR, I called the ambulance I was with him the entire way and I was totally calm. I was, as he would hope I was. But, I know that someday he and I will talk again and the ticket was and is a way to make sure he knows that everything that’s happening to me is a direct result of who he was. And so it’s a pretty cool thing for me to be able to write his name on the pass list every five days. Some of the biggest games of my life….I’ve learned more from my dad from the day he died till now then I did when he was alive.
LVO: That’s interesting.
CS: I can remember sitting down on the bench before game seven of the World Series in 2001 and I’m pitching against the Yankees in Arizona and Roger Clemens, and all the side stories that went along with this game. And, I always do the things I do on the day I pitch on the same cycle, the same routine, and I can remember… I’ll have conversations with him in a sense that, you know, that dialogue you have with someone when they’re not around where you know what their response is going to be. And it was like I was pretty worked up and I can remember him saying, in my head saying, “Seriously what’s the big deal? You’re gonna go out in about a half hour and your gonna take the ball and do what you’ve done your whole life. And your gonna pitch and then the game will be over and you’ll win or lose but you’ve done everything you can possibly do to be ready for this game. So, at some point you have to enjoy these things. You may never get here again.”
LVO: Just what you needed to hear.
CS: Yeah. I’m going to go out and I’m going to pitch and I’m going to have fun. He’s done that a lot for me over the last 19 years.
LVO: Your Red Sox teammates are actually like true family members in that like with actual families, you don’t have a choice as to who your siblings are going to be and just like in actual families you often get very different personalities mixed in there under the same roof. Can you tell me some of the roles that your teammates play in that mix? Is there someone playing the older wiser brother, the comic relief?
CS: One of the things about that is that this is a very different household playing in Boston. There are external pressures and external things that don’t happen anywhere else so you have to be a little bit different from an equipment standpoint mentally to play here. We have, every team has characters that play the role, the leader, the funny guy. On this team there are a group of guys. Jason is the leader, not the vocal leader. He’s the guy who goes out and plays the game the way it’s suppose to be played and he really leads by example. There are a couple of us who are more vocal and comfortable being vocal about it, who I think, say the things that need to be said when no one else will say them. You also have to have a manager who allows that to happen and Terry Francona is very good about allowing the clubhouse to police itself. Doug Mirabelli is the funny guy. Eric Hinske's the funny guy. We got a ton of great guys from a comic relief standpoint but everybody fills a nitch. With the amount of cultures that are put together every year and the amount of backgrounds that we have, it’s essential that you have the ability to get in somebody’s face and not have them take it personal when it’s not
LVO: Why do you feel that the combination works so well in that it had you bring home the World Championship again this season?
CS: Number one is talent... It’s an incredibly talented group of guys, that’s the first thing you have to have. Number two, you have to be semi injury-free. Everyone has to stay healthy. You have to have depth. You have to have a thorough blend of talent all the way up and down your roster cause everybody’s going to contribute. But I think it starts at the top. You have to have somebody playing here who doesn’t panic, who doesn’t act and react to the media because when the manager shows that vulnerability is seeps into the clubhouse. And, Terry Francona is the best I’ve ever seen at it. He takes it with a grain of salt here like nobody that I’ve ever been around. This media can be burdensome at times and invasive and he doesn’t allow that to fester in the clubhouse. You know if he feels like something is potentially going to get out of hand he’s the guy that has the meeting to stop it before it happens. So it does it starts at the top. The ownership Mr.Luchino, Mr. Henry, Mr. Werner make it very clear that they’re committed to not just us but our families, which is huge.
LVO: Playing for Red Sox Nation, what does it mean to you?
CS: It’s one of those things. I can’t fathom my career ending without this experience. I mean this just makes me realize that the years I spent in baseball before this were incredible and fun but there is no other place …. This is Notre Dame football, Packer football, Yankee baseball, Lakers basketball you know, Montreal hockey all rolled in to one. I said when I came here in New England it’s Catholicism and Red Sox baseball and not necessarily in that order. The thing that really kinda hit me, knocked me off my feet when I first signed here was that fact that it was Thanksgiving in 2003 and there were people in New England who were saying their Thanksgiving prayer. I was part of that prayer. I mean that’s not the Arizona Diamondbacks or the San Diego Padres, that’s a whole different level. You come here and experience it and you realize these people are personally invested in you and your life. What you do off the field and how you act matters to them. And so there’s a level of accountably that comes with playing in this organization that a lot of other teams don’t have and I like it! I can see where it might be a challenge when I was a younger player, but at this stage in my career it’s something that I absolutely cherish and it made the decision to come back here to me, a no brainer.
LVO: What did if feel like to win the World Series again? Was there a memorable moment in the series that stands out in your mind?
CS: There’s no singular memories as much this time around as there were just visions of you know Josh setting the tone in the post season with that first start in Anaheim… This was the first World Championship team of the three that I’ve been on where I didn’t think it was gonna happen, up until it happened. Up until we made the last out in game seven against Cleveland, I wasn’t sure. You know it didn’t feel the same, so in a way it made it just as special as the last one because when we went in to play Colorado, you know with the eight days off and we played that first game and it just seemed very clear that we were incredibly sharp and focused and they were knocking some of the rust off. In a seven game series you don’t have any time to catch up so you know I felt like whoever was going to come out of the National League was going to be at a disadvantage this year. From a special stand point they’re all special . I’ve heard multiple people say this. I have three World Series Championships and they are like your kids. They’re all incredibly special for their own reasons.
LVO: I know that Jonathan Papelbon was on LettermanHalloween night because I saw him, and he was speaking of David Ortiz giving a speech to you. Do you feel that that was somewhat of a defining moment?
CS: Well there were a couple of us that sat up and talked and you know the thing that that meeting did and the point that I tried to make in that meeting was that “We do not have to come back and win three games in a row against Cleveland. We have to go tonight and we have to win the first inning. We have to win this game one pitch, one out, one at bat, one inning at a time. And if we can win the first inning or play to a tie, then we win the second inning. When you can get a group of people that are that talented focused on the moment – all of them – you can’t get beat. It was the formula that we used in 2004. We had this meeting in 2004 down three “o” and it was the thing I said at that time. This is all about the moment. Winning the pitch, every at bat, every pitch grinding out every single inning, everything you do, doing it to perfection. And understanding that you know, each game is it’s own little series. When you get guys, that again, that are that talented and then a fan base like this it makes it kind of easy to do something like that, whereas other teams might have trouble focusing.
LVO: How about Mike Lowell? Were you worried that it might not get done?
CS: Yeah.
LVO: Were you sopsychedwhen you heard?
CS: I was beyond ecstatic. Mike is a man’s man. That guy …I was worried about him possibly going to New York, for the reason that… not because it’s the Yankees but because Mike is one of those guys who comes in and stabilizes a clubhouse. His presence and his experience are infecting. You catch it. And he is a guy who can come into this market, like any other market, and there’s a sense of calmness around him. He plays the game right. He plays the game hard. He’s damn good and he doesn’t take it to a level that’s unattainable. He makes you understand it….as an everyday player. I’m not the kind of guy that can be a leader on a team, in a sense, because I’m a pitcher. I play once every five days. I have no idea what the physical grind is for those guys that play every day. So you need somebody like him. And, when you don’t have him it’s very apparent that there’s a whole somewhere in the chemistry of a club. And you know that was such a huge thing. And the fact is, that the Red Sox….they changed….after the 04 team a lot of guys left. It was very clear and you know you understand it, a lot of guys left because the front office made it very clear, “We’re not going to be married to a team that did win it. We are trying to put together a team that can win it. And we don’t believe that these are the right guys going forward.” Now, you know obviously our opinions differ because this is family. Trading away and letting family members go, but, they had the same approach this time around but they looked at the pieces differently and they realized that these guys were going to be a big part of us going ahead.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
Join date : 2007-12-24
Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:07 pm
LVO: And the blog? What made you decide to have the fans write in?
CS: Well Mike and I talked about the blog a couple times and I actually just mailed him 219 pages of thank you’s yesterday.
LVO: After you won the World Series in 2004 there was a significant amount of roster turnover. How does it feel to know that come spring you will be going back to a team with so many of the same pieces that helped you to win this year?
CS: It’s comforting. In 2001 when we won the World Series in Arizona we went to spring training in 2002 with pretty much the same team, won the division again and went to the post season. And I think we felt we were very good. There’s a very similar feeling right now for me with this team. This is an incredibly positive mix. There’s young and old, all very talented and now you know, the Santana thing is a possibility and all this other stuff happening. We play in the toughest division of baseball- hands down the toughest division in baseball, so it’s incredibly reassuring to know that we’re going in with the same core group of guys who went through it all and did it before.
LVO: “Do you think in this league it’s enough to stick with what won if for you this year, or is there a need to constantly upgrade the roster to keep up with the competition?”
CS: I think you have to assess it individually each year. You know, I just said, in 04, Theo looked at the roster and said, “We have certain guys becoming free agents. I don’t believe this guy and this guy are going to be good long-term investments and they look at it as a business. And as players, it’s very personal, and so there’s a detachment there that happens, but he’s done a pretty damn good job since he’s got here. So I trust the fact that he is going to….We’re are in a market that has to win every year because of the demands and expectations of the fan base. So you know he’s doing everything he can do to put the best possible team on the field that he can. And when you can trust the front office like that, you’ll never hear players on this team say you know “I’d really wish we’d go get this guy or sign this guy or make this trade.” They’re doing everything they can do.
LVO: “You are one of the best post season pitchers of all times. What is it about the playoffs that brings out the best in you?”
CS: It’s the ultimate stage. It’s a situation when you think that just about everybody else wouldn’t have the ability to do it. You get into that stage and it’s the most important games and no ones expecting anybody to be that much better than everybody else. So I look at it as the ultimate pass/fail test. You don’t get second chances so every game really is do or die and I always feel like mentally I’m so much better than everybody else that I’m going to win I just need to hurry up and get the result. You know it’s an arrogant, egotistical thing I guess in a sense, but it’s the only way I can function when I have a ball in my hand. It’s just that innate belief there’s nobody that’s going to step to the plate that is going to be consistently better than me. You know I do take the pitching match up personal. The other guy on the other team, I’m pitching against him. I always look at it as I’ve been here. I’ve done this. I’m better than this guy and this guy is not going to out pitch me. It’s just going out there and making it happen.
LVO: “You probably have been asked this countless times, but after winning your third World Series many athletes in your stage of their career would chose to go out on top. What made you want to come back for one more year knowing that it might not have the same fairytale ending?”
CS: I’m just not smart. We had planned on this being the final season and there really is no better scenario with which to walk away from. I think there’s a lot of things that happened this year on a personal level that I was incredibly unhappy with, in how I performed. I did not want this to be my last year. I still feel like there’s a better pitcher left here that wasn’t there last year and I want to go out, having the season I know I can have and winning one more.
LVO: “Who is the best pitcher that you have ever pitched with on the same team?”
CS: Randy [Johnson], by far was the best pitcher. I’ve had a chance to pitch with him and Pedro [Martinez]. Randy was the best pitcher for a period of time that I pitched, the two years he had in 2001, 2002 were the two most dominating seasons I’ve ever seen. I think he and Pedro would be the two that I would say were by the far the best. And then I would probably put Josh in there, as the guy who probably after next year, will be, when I look back and say “Whose the best guy to play with?” It’s gonna be those three guys, with Randy the best at the time, Josh probably being right there.
LVO: This one’s from my husband. “What’s your off season like? Do you get to spend much time with your family? Do they go to spring training with you?”
CS: Unfortunately, this off-season is twice as busy as the regular season. So, I’m at the office usually by 8,8:30 in the morning and I’m home usually 5:30, 6. Not as much time as I would like. Had I the chance to go back and do it all over again I probably would have waited to do the company thing. They’ve already sacrificed so much, for me. Generally spring training they’ll come down for a week during spring break. Our kids are now at the age where their social lives are a big deal and it’s another one of the reasons why we wanted to stay here to allow them to build that foundation that you have as a kid growing up with your same friends. You know next year’s going to be a little different for us, going to Japan in mid-March.
LVO: “Is there a routine that you do before you go to spring training?”
CS: Spring training kind of started about a week and a half ago from a work out standpoint, just getting ready for next year. I’m at a point in time in my life where physically I need to lose weight. I need to drop down to a weight I haven’t been at for probably ten years. Because I’m older things are harder. I need to pay more attention to that. I was never the Adonis body type, but things always came very easy physically to me on the baseball field and as you get older those things change and it’s just a slow process. And, you don’t notice a lot of times and it creeps up on you. I’m at that point where I’ve got to do a lot of different things now to just be normal, not even better. Just to be normal I’ve got to do different stuff.
LVO: “What’s your Christmas wish list for the Red Sox organization. What are your hopes and dreams for next season?”
CS: Christmas wish list would be that we show up in spring training with our entire roster completely healthy. With Manny going into the final year of his contract, there’ll be some incentive there for him to have a special year..With David being healthy. On kind of a selfish note I hope Doug Mirabelli comes back. He’s one of my better friends in the game and one of my favorite people of all time. But, you know, they’ve already answered my wish list. This is a dream organization from that standpoint…When the game starts it’s on us, and this ownership puts us in a place to win every year where it really comes down to how well we play. So from a wish list standpoint you just want everybody to have a safe off-season and everybody show up healthy next year. Obviously the fairytale ending is I’d love to be on the mound for game seven, in the 9th inning with a five nothing lead and throw a complete game and we win another World Series and then I can walk away.
LVO: … The Red Sox are flirting with the idea of a six man pitching rotation?
CS: Yeah. It’s certainly a potential luxury having as much talent as we have, and the mix is almost perfect in that you have Wake and I. I’ve always been a guy who pitched on my fifth day no matter what the rotation was. And then coming over here now with Josh and Dice, Josh tends to want to be out there every 5th day for the most part early in the year. Dice K coming from a six-man rotation in Japan. Wake and I being able to use the extra day. Johnny Lester and Clay Buchholz both being on the Red Sox program which means if they start the beginning of the season, they won’t be able to throw 225 innings cause they’ll have an innings cut off point. You know that’s a potential scenario that very few teams have. Very few teams have three or four good big league starting pitchers, we’ve got six. So, I can see it being messed with.
LVO: What do you think it’s going to take for you guys to win back the World Championship?
CS: Health. I think we’re so good and so deep that if we stay healthy. We never won more than four in a row last year, we never lost more than four in a row until, until we won out to end the season. That comes back to starting pitching. We had a deep solid staff. Our bullpen was phenomenal. It’s health. We just have to stay healthy.
LVO: Can you tell me how you and Shonda chose to work with these different charities Lou Gehrigs (ALS) and The SHADE Foundation?
CS: I met a patient in 1992. The ALS Foundation in Philadelphia was the charity of the Phillies much like the Jimmy Fund is to the Red Sox. We had just kind of begun to establish ourselves and we wanted to get involved with something out in the field. I’m a typical male. I’m obsessive compulsive. I do everything at 150 miles an hour. I met Ellen Phillips the President of the Chapter and wanted to get involved and we just dove in headfirst and started a bunch of different programs. We’re now in the 15th year of the “Curt’s Pitch for ALS” program and the golf tournament there. We’re in the 7th year for the Arizona chapter in the above programs and then we have the program running in Boston as well. Every winter we go back and do all the events in the different cities. SHADE Foundation was my wife’s answer to being a cancer patient. She’s a cancer survivor and she took something that people might file away as an unpleasant memory and as a horrible experience, turned it around into something she shares with everybody in a message that is powerful. She took a life threatening illness and turned it into a cure for other people. It’s that simple because the SHADE Foundation provides sunscreens for schools. And Arizona has the second highest skin cancer rate, next to Australia, on the planet and our kids went to school there. At the peak sun times of the day the kids are out on the playground. So they put shades over the playgrounds. But it hit home for me…the first event they did was a screening at the ballpark just to get the SHADE Foundation kicked off and they found three people diagnosed with stage two or stage three melanomas that had no idea. There are three people that would be dead today that aren’t because of what my wife did. That really is the ultimate calling isn’t it? God puts us on this earth to make other people’s lives better and she’s done that.
LVO: Do you feel that there are any misconceptions out there about you that you’d want to clear up?
CS: Well there’s lot of things said about me that as a human being you don’t appreciate. People feel that I’m an attention whore; glory hound hogthing…which I think if you talked to the people that know me you’d know that a lot of that is just the opposite. I’m opinionated. I’m very opinionated and I’m passionate about life. So, if you ask me a question, and you can tell through this interview, I don’t have the ability to say “yes” or “no” to things because the things that I believe in, I’m passionate about and I have a belief on. I’ve never claimed to be right all the time and I know I’m not. I know I’ve made some heinous mistakes in my career saying things that I shouldn’t have said. But, that doesn’t make me anything other than human. You know the people that chastise me have all done the same things. That doesn’t make it right, it’s just kinda that whole glass house thing. But, that’s the only way I know how. That’s who I am and the bottom line is I’m okay with being wrong as long as me being wrong isn’t a malicious attempt on somebody else. The Barry Bonds quotes from earlier in the year? What a horrible thing to say. Regardless of whether I felt it or not, or whether I believe it or not it’s not my place to do that and when you think about the impact of those comments and not just on Barry but on his family...I have kids. And, so there are times that I wish I would have shut up, but the bottom line is I know that I’m a good person. I know that I don’t mean ill-will toward anybody. I know that I have a window of opportunity to be a spoke person for ALS that will close when baseball’s over. I know that I have a window of opportunity for any of the other things I’m doing that will close when baseball’s over. The media…it’s really a damned if you do – damned if you don’t thing. The unfortunate part is that fans attribute the media commentary and editorial as expertise …
LVO: A perfect day for you would be what? If you could just have a perfect day …
CS: Sleep till noon. Wake up and have my wife’s Tennessee breakfast. Take a nap. Probably play some semblance of game with all of my kids. Come into the office for a couple hours. Hang around these incredible people. Go home. Play catch with Gehrig. Find out about my daughter’s day. Sit around the table as a family. Have a dinner and talk. Things you don’t get a lot of. Then a family movie in the theater with popcorn and then a Schilling family night on the bed.
LVO: What do you want people to remember you most for a hundred years from now? What are the accomplishments you’re most proud of?
CS: A hundred years from now I want people to say that I was the person that was most responsible for finding the cure for ALS.[/quote]
CS: Well Mike and I talked about the blog a couple times and I actually just mailed him 219 pages of thank you’s yesterday.
LVO: After you won the World Series in 2004 there was a significant amount of roster turnover. How does it feel to know that come spring you will be going back to a team with so many of the same pieces that helped you to win this year?
CS: It’s comforting. In 2001 when we won the World Series in Arizona we went to spring training in 2002 with pretty much the same team, won the division again and went to the post season. And I think we felt we were very good. There’s a very similar feeling right now for me with this team. This is an incredibly positive mix. There’s young and old, all very talented and now you know, the Santana thing is a possibility and all this other stuff happening. We play in the toughest division of baseball- hands down the toughest division in baseball, so it’s incredibly reassuring to know that we’re going in with the same core group of guys who went through it all and did it before.
LVO: “Do you think in this league it’s enough to stick with what won if for you this year, or is there a need to constantly upgrade the roster to keep up with the competition?”
CS: I think you have to assess it individually each year. You know, I just said, in 04, Theo looked at the roster and said, “We have certain guys becoming free agents. I don’t believe this guy and this guy are going to be good long-term investments and they look at it as a business. And as players, it’s very personal, and so there’s a detachment there that happens, but he’s done a pretty damn good job since he’s got here. So I trust the fact that he is going to….We’re are in a market that has to win every year because of the demands and expectations of the fan base. So you know he’s doing everything he can do to put the best possible team on the field that he can. And when you can trust the front office like that, you’ll never hear players on this team say you know “I’d really wish we’d go get this guy or sign this guy or make this trade.” They’re doing everything they can do.
LVO: “You are one of the best post season pitchers of all times. What is it about the playoffs that brings out the best in you?”
CS: It’s the ultimate stage. It’s a situation when you think that just about everybody else wouldn’t have the ability to do it. You get into that stage and it’s the most important games and no ones expecting anybody to be that much better than everybody else. So I look at it as the ultimate pass/fail test. You don’t get second chances so every game really is do or die and I always feel like mentally I’m so much better than everybody else that I’m going to win I just need to hurry up and get the result. You know it’s an arrogant, egotistical thing I guess in a sense, but it’s the only way I can function when I have a ball in my hand. It’s just that innate belief there’s nobody that’s going to step to the plate that is going to be consistently better than me. You know I do take the pitching match up personal. The other guy on the other team, I’m pitching against him. I always look at it as I’ve been here. I’ve done this. I’m better than this guy and this guy is not going to out pitch me. It’s just going out there and making it happen.
LVO: “You probably have been asked this countless times, but after winning your third World Series many athletes in your stage of their career would chose to go out on top. What made you want to come back for one more year knowing that it might not have the same fairytale ending?”
CS: I’m just not smart. We had planned on this being the final season and there really is no better scenario with which to walk away from. I think there’s a lot of things that happened this year on a personal level that I was incredibly unhappy with, in how I performed. I did not want this to be my last year. I still feel like there’s a better pitcher left here that wasn’t there last year and I want to go out, having the season I know I can have and winning one more.
LVO: “Who is the best pitcher that you have ever pitched with on the same team?”
CS: Randy [Johnson], by far was the best pitcher. I’ve had a chance to pitch with him and Pedro [Martinez]. Randy was the best pitcher for a period of time that I pitched, the two years he had in 2001, 2002 were the two most dominating seasons I’ve ever seen. I think he and Pedro would be the two that I would say were by the far the best. And then I would probably put Josh in there, as the guy who probably after next year, will be, when I look back and say “Whose the best guy to play with?” It’s gonna be those three guys, with Randy the best at the time, Josh probably being right there.
LVO: This one’s from my husband. “What’s your off season like? Do you get to spend much time with your family? Do they go to spring training with you?”
CS: Unfortunately, this off-season is twice as busy as the regular season. So, I’m at the office usually by 8,8:30 in the morning and I’m home usually 5:30, 6. Not as much time as I would like. Had I the chance to go back and do it all over again I probably would have waited to do the company thing. They’ve already sacrificed so much, for me. Generally spring training they’ll come down for a week during spring break. Our kids are now at the age where their social lives are a big deal and it’s another one of the reasons why we wanted to stay here to allow them to build that foundation that you have as a kid growing up with your same friends. You know next year’s going to be a little different for us, going to Japan in mid-March.
LVO: “Is there a routine that you do before you go to spring training?”
CS: Spring training kind of started about a week and a half ago from a work out standpoint, just getting ready for next year. I’m at a point in time in my life where physically I need to lose weight. I need to drop down to a weight I haven’t been at for probably ten years. Because I’m older things are harder. I need to pay more attention to that. I was never the Adonis body type, but things always came very easy physically to me on the baseball field and as you get older those things change and it’s just a slow process. And, you don’t notice a lot of times and it creeps up on you. I’m at that point where I’ve got to do a lot of different things now to just be normal, not even better. Just to be normal I’ve got to do different stuff.
LVO: “What’s your Christmas wish list for the Red Sox organization. What are your hopes and dreams for next season?”
CS: Christmas wish list would be that we show up in spring training with our entire roster completely healthy. With Manny going into the final year of his contract, there’ll be some incentive there for him to have a special year..With David being healthy. On kind of a selfish note I hope Doug Mirabelli comes back. He’s one of my better friends in the game and one of my favorite people of all time. But, you know, they’ve already answered my wish list. This is a dream organization from that standpoint…When the game starts it’s on us, and this ownership puts us in a place to win every year where it really comes down to how well we play. So from a wish list standpoint you just want everybody to have a safe off-season and everybody show up healthy next year. Obviously the fairytale ending is I’d love to be on the mound for game seven, in the 9th inning with a five nothing lead and throw a complete game and we win another World Series and then I can walk away.
LVO: … The Red Sox are flirting with the idea of a six man pitching rotation?
CS: Yeah. It’s certainly a potential luxury having as much talent as we have, and the mix is almost perfect in that you have Wake and I. I’ve always been a guy who pitched on my fifth day no matter what the rotation was. And then coming over here now with Josh and Dice, Josh tends to want to be out there every 5th day for the most part early in the year. Dice K coming from a six-man rotation in Japan. Wake and I being able to use the extra day. Johnny Lester and Clay Buchholz both being on the Red Sox program which means if they start the beginning of the season, they won’t be able to throw 225 innings cause they’ll have an innings cut off point. You know that’s a potential scenario that very few teams have. Very few teams have three or four good big league starting pitchers, we’ve got six. So, I can see it being messed with.
LVO: What do you think it’s going to take for you guys to win back the World Championship?
CS: Health. I think we’re so good and so deep that if we stay healthy. We never won more than four in a row last year, we never lost more than four in a row until, until we won out to end the season. That comes back to starting pitching. We had a deep solid staff. Our bullpen was phenomenal. It’s health. We just have to stay healthy.
LVO: Can you tell me how you and Shonda chose to work with these different charities Lou Gehrigs (ALS) and The SHADE Foundation?
CS: I met a patient in 1992. The ALS Foundation in Philadelphia was the charity of the Phillies much like the Jimmy Fund is to the Red Sox. We had just kind of begun to establish ourselves and we wanted to get involved with something out in the field. I’m a typical male. I’m obsessive compulsive. I do everything at 150 miles an hour. I met Ellen Phillips the President of the Chapter and wanted to get involved and we just dove in headfirst and started a bunch of different programs. We’re now in the 15th year of the “Curt’s Pitch for ALS” program and the golf tournament there. We’re in the 7th year for the Arizona chapter in the above programs and then we have the program running in Boston as well. Every winter we go back and do all the events in the different cities. SHADE Foundation was my wife’s answer to being a cancer patient. She’s a cancer survivor and she took something that people might file away as an unpleasant memory and as a horrible experience, turned it around into something she shares with everybody in a message that is powerful. She took a life threatening illness and turned it into a cure for other people. It’s that simple because the SHADE Foundation provides sunscreens for schools. And Arizona has the second highest skin cancer rate, next to Australia, on the planet and our kids went to school there. At the peak sun times of the day the kids are out on the playground. So they put shades over the playgrounds. But it hit home for me…the first event they did was a screening at the ballpark just to get the SHADE Foundation kicked off and they found three people diagnosed with stage two or stage three melanomas that had no idea. There are three people that would be dead today that aren’t because of what my wife did. That really is the ultimate calling isn’t it? God puts us on this earth to make other people’s lives better and she’s done that.
LVO: Do you feel that there are any misconceptions out there about you that you’d want to clear up?
CS: Well there’s lot of things said about me that as a human being you don’t appreciate. People feel that I’m an attention whore; glory hound hogthing…which I think if you talked to the people that know me you’d know that a lot of that is just the opposite. I’m opinionated. I’m very opinionated and I’m passionate about life. So, if you ask me a question, and you can tell through this interview, I don’t have the ability to say “yes” or “no” to things because the things that I believe in, I’m passionate about and I have a belief on. I’ve never claimed to be right all the time and I know I’m not. I know I’ve made some heinous mistakes in my career saying things that I shouldn’t have said. But, that doesn’t make me anything other than human. You know the people that chastise me have all done the same things. That doesn’t make it right, it’s just kinda that whole glass house thing. But, that’s the only way I know how. That’s who I am and the bottom line is I’m okay with being wrong as long as me being wrong isn’t a malicious attempt on somebody else. The Barry Bonds quotes from earlier in the year? What a horrible thing to say. Regardless of whether I felt it or not, or whether I believe it or not it’s not my place to do that and when you think about the impact of those comments and not just on Barry but on his family...I have kids. And, so there are times that I wish I would have shut up, but the bottom line is I know that I’m a good person. I know that I don’t mean ill-will toward anybody. I know that I have a window of opportunity to be a spoke person for ALS that will close when baseball’s over. I know that I have a window of opportunity for any of the other things I’m doing that will close when baseball’s over. The media…it’s really a damned if you do – damned if you don’t thing. The unfortunate part is that fans attribute the media commentary and editorial as expertise …
LVO: A perfect day for you would be what? If you could just have a perfect day …
CS: Sleep till noon. Wake up and have my wife’s Tennessee breakfast. Take a nap. Probably play some semblance of game with all of my kids. Come into the office for a couple hours. Hang around these incredible people. Go home. Play catch with Gehrig. Find out about my daughter’s day. Sit around the table as a family. Have a dinner and talk. Things you don’t get a lot of. Then a family movie in the theater with popcorn and then a Schilling family night on the bed.
LVO: What do you want people to remember you most for a hundred years from now? What are the accomplishments you’re most proud of?
CS: A hundred years from now I want people to say that I was the person that was most responsible for finding the cure for ALS.[/quote]
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:11 pm
Interview with Fat Actress Curt Schilling- Ace to Entreprenuer
http://www.wickedlocal.com/maynard/news/x1059343666
LVO: Why do you feel that the combination works so well in that it had you bring home the World Championship again this season?
CS: Number one is talent... It’s an incredibly talented group of guys, that’s the first thing you have to have. Number two, you have to be semi injury-free. Everyone has to stay healthy. You have to have depth. You have to have a thorough blend of talent all the way up and down your roster cause everybody’s going to contribute. But I think it starts at the top. You have to have somebody playing here who doesn’t panic, who doesn’t act and react to the media because when the manager shows that vulnerability is seeps into the clubhouse. And, Terry Francona is the best I’ve ever seen at it. He takes it with a grain of salt here like nobody that I’ve ever been around. This media can be burdensome at times and invasive and he doesn’t allow that to fester in the clubhouse. You know if he feels like something is potentially going to get out of hand he’s the guy that has the meeting to stop it before it happens. So it does it starts at the top. The ownership Mr.Luchino, Mr. Henry, Mr. Werner make it very clear that they’re committed to not just us but our families, which is huge.
LVO: Playing for Red Sox Nation, what does it mean to you?
CS: It’s one of those things. I can’t fathom my career ending without this experience. I mean this just makes me realize that the years I spent in baseball before this were incredible and fun but there is no other place …. This is Notre Dame football, Packer football, Yankee baseball, Lakers basketball you know, Montreal hockey all rolled in to one. I said when I came here in New England it’s Catholicism and Red Sox baseball and not necessarily in that order. The thing that really kinda hit me, knocked me off my feet when I first signed here was that fact that it was Thanksgiving in 2003 and there were people in New England who were saying their Thanksgiving prayer. I was part of that prayer. I mean that’s not the Arizona Diamondbacks or the San Diego Padres, that’s a whole different level. You come here and experience it and you realize these people are personally invested in you and your life. What you do off the field and how you act matters to them. And so there’s a level of accountably that comes with playing in this organization that a lot of other teams don’t have and I like it! I can see where it might be a challenge when I was a younger player, but at this stage in my career it’s something that I absolutely cherish and it made the decision to come back here to me, a no brainer.
LVO: What did if feel like to win the World Series again? Was there a memorable moment in the series that stands out in your mind?
CS: There’s no singular memories as much this time around as there were just visions of you know Josh setting the tone in the post season with that first start in Anaheim… This was the first World Championship team of the three that I’ve been on where I didn’t think it was gonna happen, up until it happened. Up until we made the last out in game seven against Cleveland, I wasn’t sure. You know it didn’t feel the same, so in a way it made it just as special as the last one because when we went in to play Colorado, you know with the eight days off and we played that first game and it just seemed very clear that we were incredibly sharp and focused and they were knocking some of the rust off. In a seven game series you don’t have any time to catch up so you know I felt like whoever was going to come out of the National League was going to be at a disadvantage this year. From a special stand point they’re all special . I’ve heard multiple people say this. I have three World Series Championships and they are like your kids. They’re all incredibly special for their own reasons.
LVO: I know that Jonathan Papelbon was on LettermanHalloween night because I saw him, and he was speaking of David Ortiz giving a speech to you. Do you feel that that was somewhat of a defining moment?
CS: Well there were a couple of us that sat up and talked and you know the thing that that meeting did and the point that I tried to make in that meeting was that “We do not have to come back and win three games in a row against Cleveland. We have to go tonight and we have to win the first inning. We have to win this game one pitch, one out, one at bat, one inning at a time. And if we can win the first inning or play to a tie, then we win the second inning. When you can get a group of people that are that talented focused on the moment – all of them – you can’t get beat. It was the formula that we used in 2004. We had this meeting in 2004 down three “o” and it was the thing I said at that time. This is all about the moment. Winning the pitch, every at bat, every pitch grinding out every single inning, everything you do, doing it to perfection. And understanding that you know, each game is it’s own little series. When you get guys, that again, that are that talented and then a fan base like this it makes it kind of easy to do something like that, whereas other teams might have trouble focusing.
LVO: How about Mike Lowell? Were you worried that it might not get done?
CS: Yeah.
LVO: Were you sopsychedwhen you heard?
CS: I was beyond ecstatic. Mike is a man’s man. That guy …I was worried about him possibly going to New York, for the reason that… not because it’s the Yankees but because Mike is one of those guys who comes in and stabilizes a clubhouse. His presence and his experience are infecting. You catch it. And he is a guy who can come into this market, like any other market, and there’s a sense of calmness around him. He plays the game right. He plays the game hard. He’s damn good and he doesn’t take it to a level that’s unattainable. He makes you understand it….as an everyday player. I’m not the kind of guy that can be a leader on a team, in a sense, because I’m a pitcher. I play once every five days. I have no idea what the physical grind is for those guys that play every day. So you need somebody like him. And, when you don’t have him it’s very apparent that there’s a whole somewhere in the chemistry of a club. And you know that was such a huge thing. And the fact is, that the Red Sox….they changed….after the 04 team a lot of guys left. It was very clear and you know you understand it, a lot of guys left because the front office made it very clear, “We’re not going to be married to a team that did win it. We are trying to put together a team that can win it. And we don’t believe that these are the right guys going forward.” Now, you know obviously our opinions differ because this is family. Trading away and letting family members go, but, they had the same approach this time around but they looked at the pieces differently and they realized that these guys were going to be a big part of us going ahead.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:13 pm
Here's some a little summary - Interview with Curt Schilling- Ace to Entrepreneur
http://www.wickedlocal.com/maynard/news/x1059343666
LVO: Why do you feel that the combination works so well in that it had you bring home the World Championship again this season?
CS: Number one is talent... It’s an incredibly talented group of guys, that’s the first thing you have to have. Number two, you have to be semi injury-free. Everyone has to stay healthy. You have to have depth. You have to have a thorough blend of talent all the way up and down your roster cause everybody’s going to contribute. But I think it starts at the top. You have to have somebody playing here who doesn’t panic, who doesn’t act and react to the media because when the manager shows that vulnerability is seeps into the clubhouse. And, Terry Francona is the best I’ve ever seen at it. He takes it with a grain of salt here like nobody that I’ve ever been around. This media can be burdensome at times and invasive and he doesn’t allow that to fester in the clubhouse. You know if he feels like something is potentially going to get out of hand he’s the guy that has the meeting to stop it before it happens. So it does it starts at the top. The ownership Mr.Luchino, Mr. Henry, Mr. Werner make it very clear that they’re committed to not just us but our families, which is huge.
LVO: Playing for Red Sox Nation, what does it mean to you?
CS: It’s one of those things. I can’t fathom my career ending without this experience. I mean this just makes me realize that the years I spent in baseball before this were incredible and fun but there is no other place …. This is Notre Dame football, Packer football, Yankee baseball, Lakers basketball you know, Montreal hockey all rolled in to one. I said when I came here in New England it’s Catholicism and Red Sox baseball and not necessarily in that order. The thing that really kinda hit me, knocked me off my feet when I first signed here was that fact that it was Thanksgiving in 2003 and there were people in New England who were saying their Thanksgiving prayer. I was part of that prayer. I mean that’s not the Arizona Diamondbacks or the San Diego Padres, that’s a whole different level. You come here and experience it and you realize these people are personally invested in you and your life. What you do off the field and how you act matters to them. And so there’s a level of accountably that comes with playing in this organization that a lot of other teams don’t have and I like it! I can see where it might be a challenge when I was a younger player, but at this stage in my career it’s something that I absolutely cherish and it made the decision to come back here to me, a no brainer.
LVO: What did if feel like to win the World Series again? Was there a memorable moment in the series that stands out in your mind?
CS: There’s no singular memories as much this time around as there were just visions of you know Josh setting the tone in the post season with that first start in Anaheim… This was the first World Championship team of the three that I’ve been on where I didn’t think it was gonna happen, up until it happened. Up until we made the last out in game seven against Cleveland, I wasn’t sure. You know it didn’t feel the same, so in a way it made it just as special as the last one because when we went in to play Colorado, you know with the eight days off and we played that first game and it just seemed very clear that we were incredibly sharp and focused and they were knocking some of the rust off. In a seven game series you don’t have any time to catch up so you know I felt like whoever was going to come out of the National League was going to be at a disadvantage this year. From a special stand point they’re all special . I’ve heard multiple people say this. I have three World Series Championships and they are like your kids. They’re all incredibly special for their own reasons.
LVO: I know that Jonathan Papelbon was on LettermanHalloween night because I saw him, and he was speaking of David Ortiz giving a speech to you. Do you feel that that was somewhat of a defining moment?
CS: Well there were a couple of us that sat up and talked and you know the thing that that meeting did and the point that I tried to make in that meeting was that “We do not have to come back and win three games in a row against Cleveland. We have to go tonight and we have to win the first inning. We have to win this game one pitch, one out, one at bat, one inning at a time. And if we can win the first inning or play to a tie, then we win the second inning. When you can get a group of people that are that talented focused on the moment – all of them – you can’t get beat. It was the formula that we used in 2004. We had this meeting in 2004 down three “o” and it was the thing I said at that time. This is all about the moment. Winning the pitch, every at bat, every pitch grinding out every single inning, everything you do, doing it to perfection. And understanding that you know, each game is it’s own little series. When you get guys, that again, that are that talented and then a fan base like this it makes it kind of easy to do something like that, whereas other teams might have trouble focusing.
LVO: How about Mike Lowell? Were you worried that it might not get done?
CS: Yeah.
LVO: Were you sopsychedwhen you heard?
CS: I was beyond ecstatic. Mike is a man’s man. That guy …I was worried about him possibly going to New York, for the reason that… not because it’s the Yankees but because Mike is one of those guys who comes in and stabilizes a clubhouse. His presence and his experience are infecting. You catch it. And he is a guy who can come into this market, like any other market, and there’s a sense of calmness around him. He plays the game right. He plays the game hard. He’s damn good and he doesn’t take it to a level that’s unattainable. He makes you understand it….as an everyday player. I’m not the kind of guy that can be a leader on a team, in a sense, because I’m a pitcher. I play once every five days. I have no idea what the physical grind is for those guys that play every day. So you need somebody like him. And, when you don’t have him it’s very apparent that there’s a whole somewhere in the chemistry of a club. And you know that was such a huge thing. And the fact is, that the Red Sox….they changed….after the 04 team a lot of guys left. It was very clear and you know you understand it, a lot of guys left because the front office made it very clear, “We’re not going to be married to a team that did win it. We are trying to put together a team that can win it. And we don’t believe that these are the right guys going forward.” Now, you know obviously our opinions differ because this is family. Trading away and letting family members go, but, they had the same approach this time around but they looked at the pieces differently and they realized that these guys were going to be a big part of us going ahead.
RedMagma- Posts : 3654
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:16 pm
Mets May have Best Offer
...posted by Matthew Cerrone...
http://www.metsblog.com/
During his appearance on WFAN today, SI.com’s Jon Heyman said that the Twins know they must trade Johan Santana, and the ‘general sense around baseball’ is that they will.
According to Heyman, the Yankees and Mets are most interested in Santana, but Yankees GM Brian Cashman does not want to make a move.
The Mets, however, notes Heyman, are very serious - so much so that ‘some Mets people’ believe they have made the ‘best offer so far,’ i.e., ‘any four of their prospects.’
…first off, this would suggest that i should zip it when i say, ‘Omar, pull the trigger,’ because, from what heyman is saying, it’s not a matter of omar pulling a trigger, it’s about the Twins pulling a trigger…
…that said, i had written something similar to heyman’s comments last week, noting how people connected to the Mets seemed ‘very optimistic,’ but that people connected to santana continued to see boston as a favorite…that disconnect, as a Mets fan, has always been alarming to me…i’m glad that at least heyman is hearing a similar sense of positivity, not that it makes me any more or less confident in santana ending up in queens…
Heyman also discussed his Hall of Fame votes, the Nick Swisher trade, the future of Roger Clemens and the relationship between Scott Boras and Alex Rodriguez.
To listen to Heyman’s full interview, go to WFAN.com.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:20 pm
http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=18665
Shant (NYC): Speaking of Hankenstein, isn't he tampering yet again with his recent proclamations?
SportsNation Keith Law: I believe it's acceptable to comment on a player when you are in active negotiations to acquire him. Whether acceptable means "explicitly allowed" or "tacitly allowed" is another matter, but I don't think Hank has done anything wrong ... in that sense.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:23 pm
http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=18658
Devito-Ma: Where do Yankees rank behind Rays and Redsox in prospect handbook?
SportsNation Jim Callis: John Manuel has kindly IMed me our Top 5: Devil Rays, Red Sox, Reds, Rangers, Yankees, in that order.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:25 pm
They are saying that the trade could happen within the next week…if it does, you are going to need to find some new filler material, Cerrone! Still a few weeks till P’s and C’s
Seriously. Want Johan more than any other player in MLB, but 3-5 posts daily about who said what in regards to when are starting to get ridiculous. There is such a thing as over-reporting something. I think at this point we all have a pretty good feel for whats happened and what its gonna take to bring him here. I dont need to know if Peter Gammons took a dump next to someone that looked like Santana in a public urinal. If there is legitimatly a news break, then ABSOLUTLEY
I’m not complaining about it at all..I’m glad that Matt is able to provide us with ALL the detail regarding Johan, that way it is easier to get an accurate picture of what is going on. Its been a really slow off-season that Santana non-news has dominated the board…I mean nothing else is going on that would be of even remote interest to the Met fan
Supposedly, they are friends. At least, Santana made some public comments about how mad he was when the Twins traded Castillo away last yea
Seriously. Want Johan more than any other player in MLB, but 3-5 posts daily about who said what in regards to when are starting to get ridiculous. There is such a thing as over-reporting something. I think at this point we all have a pretty good feel for whats happened and what its gonna take to bring him here. I dont need to know if Peter Gammons took a dump next to someone that looked like Santana in a public urinal. If there is legitimatly a news break, then ABSOLUTLEY
I’m not complaining about it at all..I’m glad that Matt is able to provide us with ALL the detail regarding Johan, that way it is easier to get an accurate picture of what is going on. Its been a really slow off-season that Santana non-news has dominated the board…I mean nothing else is going on that would be of even remote interest to the Met fan
Supposedly, they are friends. At least, Santana made some public comments about how mad he was when the Twins traded Castillo away last yea
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:30 pm
BH says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hughes is not a legit #1. You have to have more than 1/2 a seson under your belt to claim that titile. He’s a choice for a good #3 but he still needs to show he can do it over a full season and do it year after year. He’s got potential but that’s it. Same with Slowey, Baker and Blackburn. Fatty has shown he CAN’T do it so you have to hope he changes his stripes. Again, with that rotation Twins lose 90 so you might as well go for nothing but prospects becuase you hve no chance for 2-3 years.
Me too says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
If Liriano comes back strong, we should have our #1. He was nicknamed “franchise” for a reason. Hughes would make an excellent #2 or #3, but to project him as an Ace seems alittle presumptuous (I know staying that if Liriano comes back strong is abit presumptuous as well).
I guess being an ace is really a perspective thing, based on the staff you are pitching on. If Santana was here, no way would anyone else be considered an ace.
Anyway, the reason you want a legitimate #1 is you want to match your pitchers up with other teams pitchers. Your #5 won’t fare well against a #1, and vice-versa. Of course it is even more important come playoff time, but realistically, I don’t think we have to be too worried about that for a year or 2.
sane says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
The question with Hughes is his durability, not his health.
His health is probably fine.
I don’t think medical information can tell you whether or not he will have shoulder tendonitis, tired arm or a hamstring problem in the future.
These are problems which he has had in the past and may never (or often) reoccur.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hughes is not a legit #1. You have to have more than 1/2 a seson under your belt to claim that titile. He’s a choice for a good #3 but he still needs to show he can do it over a full season and do it year after year. He’s got potential but that’s it. Same with Slowey, Baker and Blackburn. Fatty has shown he CAN’T do it so you have to hope he changes his stripes. Again, with that rotation Twins lose 90 so you might as well go for nothing but prospects becuase you hve no chance for 2-3 years.
Me too says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
If Liriano comes back strong, we should have our #1. He was nicknamed “franchise” for a reason. Hughes would make an excellent #2 or #3, but to project him as an Ace seems alittle presumptuous (I know staying that if Liriano comes back strong is abit presumptuous as well).
I guess being an ace is really a perspective thing, based on the staff you are pitching on. If Santana was here, no way would anyone else be considered an ace.
Anyway, the reason you want a legitimate #1 is you want to match your pitchers up with other teams pitchers. Your #5 won’t fare well against a #1, and vice-versa. Of course it is even more important come playoff time, but realistically, I don’t think we have to be too worried about that for a year or 2.
sane says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
The question with Hughes is his durability, not his health.
His health is probably fine.
I don’t think medical information can tell you whether or not he will have shoulder tendonitis, tired arm or a hamstring problem in the future.
These are problems which he has had in the past and may never (or often) reoccur.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:37 pm
Latest Santana Buzz From MetsBlog
MetsBlog's Matthew Cerrone has a couple of recent radio reports referencing the team's talks for Johan Santana. One involves Mike Francesa, the other Jon Heyman.
* Francesa says the Twins are still demanding Jose Reyes, and the Mets will never do that.
* According to Heyman, the Mets might be willing to give up any four of their prospects. As in Fernando Martinez, Deolis Guerra, Carlos Gomez, and Kevin Mulvey? That would seemingly be impossible for the Twins to turn down. ESPN's Keith Law went as far to say today that he "wouldn't deal Martinez for one year of Santana under any circumstances."
MetsBlog's Matthew Cerrone has a couple of recent radio reports referencing the team's talks for Johan Santana. One involves Mike Francesa, the other Jon Heyman.
* Francesa says the Twins are still demanding Jose Reyes, and the Mets will never do that.
* According to Heyman, the Mets might be willing to give up any four of their prospects. As in Fernando Martinez, Deolis Guerra, Carlos Gomez, and Kevin Mulvey? That would seemingly be impossible for the Twins to turn down. ESPN's Keith Law went as far to say today that he "wouldn't deal Martinez for one year of Santana under any circumstances."
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:40 pm
Kennedy is less likely to be a total bust. At worst I am pretty confident he will be a #4 starter in the AL, while Guerra could never reach the majors at all. Law has strong opinions on guys (has always been down on Hughes), but I don't have a problem with him going with the guy more likely to make a difference at this point.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:42 pm
I don't see the leverage the Twins have here. The Yanks are constantly pulling out, and though they need him more than the Sox they would hate for the Sox to get him. The Sox are keeping him away from the Yanks and have a perfectly good rotation as is. The only team who has a need and a realistic chance of getting Santana is the Mets, unless the Yankees are willing to deal Hughes. To me, it's never looked like the Yanks want to deal Hughes unless it's nearly a straight-up deal (Melky has very little value).
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:45 pm
Hanks allowed to talk , he's the owner. The less I hear from Cashman the better. The dude did a terrible job with the pitching staff over the last 5 years and its showed every year come playoff time. Maybe these kids will help redeem his legacy here but right now when I see Cashman talk all I see in my head is Carl Pavano , Jared Wright and Kevin Brown.
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:55 pm
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/aggregate?sort=atBatsPerHomeRun&split=0&group=7&season=2007&seasonType=2&statType=batting&type=exp2
14) NY Yankees 19 86 .221 2193 1634 1.34 138 28.4 559 6528
28.4 AB/HR?
14) NY Yankees 19 86 .221 2193 1634 1.34 138 28.4 559 6528
28.4 AB/HR?
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:23 pm
Don, Don't forget about Radomski who's former Mets Club house attendant who was supplier for Mcnamee.. How come your ignoring him? Everyone in the Ny Media always pointing fingers at Yankees? The Yankees are ruining baseball , They're bad and Evil. Where's Redsox? Where double standard? Dan How do you feel about Loduca , Mota, Schoenweis now?
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:35 pm
Is it odd that The Yankees have 207 homeruns and leads in Mlb in that category but They're last in homeruns per at bat?
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:44 pm
My Friend who's a Redsox Fan that I know will hate Joba even more now because They're think He
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Re: Santana
RedMagma Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:50 pm
2007 Yankees = A ton of Contact hitters and [Babip] Batting average on balls in play?
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» Santana
» Santana, Hughes wonder what's up
» Santana's not coming
» Yanks should say no thanks for Santana
» Santana
» Santana, Hughes wonder what's up
» Santana's not coming
» Yanks should say no thanks for Santana
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