I don’t think it came as a surprise to any of us the way we were playing.
I thought we were definitely going to have a good team because of our pitching coming out of spring training. It was just a matter of everybody staying healthy and pitching the way they knew how to pitch. That was the big thing.
Toward the end of the season, we kind of hit a bump in the road there, and Cleveland got within a game and a half. But we showed a lot of guts and heart at the end. We won five in a row. Showed a lot of guts and heart. We just went back to our fundamental way of playing baseball.
Hitting the home run against Cleveland this year. It was the bottom of the ninth. That was when they were coming back. They had gained all the ground on us. It was our last homestand. Riske (1) just left a fastball up over the plate, and I was able to capitalize on it. What it meant to us and our standing was huge to us. They were within a game and a half, and that put us back up 2 1 /2 games. What the home run meant as far as the standings was that it was the biggest home run for me.
It’s one of the best feelings a person could have. You have 20,000, 30,000 people out there cheering for you, and the game’s over. It’s a great feeling. It’s all worth doing when you get to home plate.
My dad went into the Air Force and played baseball wherever he was stationed. Germany, wherever else. Baseball is his love too. He had a couple of tryouts. The Dodgers. Didn’t make the team, but he at least gave it a shot. Now he’s living his dream through me.
He watches every game on TV. Whenever I was struggling this year, my mom called me and said, “You need to talk to him.” He wants me to do so well, he’s so worried. I had a bad year last year, and I’d tell people, “I don’t know who had a worse year, me or my dad.”
I’ve been given a lot of advice.
I grew up in Westphalia, Mo. Population about 300. No stoplights. I brought Rowand, and we counted the stop signs. I think there were four stop signs.
I always felt if I could beat my older brother, I could beat anyone. He was four years older than me. He was a guy I always looked up to. When I was a freshman in high school and he was a freshman in college, or when I was in grade school and he was in high school, I always tried to be like him, dress like him, act like him. To me, he was the guy I wanted to be like.
He played baseball at Central Missouri State. He’s kind of like my dad, living his dream through me. He played in the minor leagues with the Phillies for two years, then got released. He teaches at a college now. Drafting and technology. He loves that stuff. Anytime I need something done at my house, he’ll draw up the plan for it.
I have a little girl 2 years old, Anna, and the one this year is Lucy. After the game, if you have a bad game, it doesn’t matter. Every time you see them or you come off the road, they run toward you and they’re yelling your name. That’s stuff you just can’t replace. I love being there for that.
They’re the best thing in the world. (2) Iguchi introduced them to me. Awesome. You’d never believe it.
I like to hunt and fish. Ask Rowand. I took him out two days. He wasn’t bad. He actually surprised me. He was a lot better than I thought. He actually hit a bird. He hit one flying away, about 50 yards away, which is pretty impressive.
St. Louis Cardinals were big back home. Ozzie Smith. Jack Clark. Tommy Herr. They stretch pretty far into Missouri.
That’d be great to play White Sox-Cardinals. I was at Game 4 last year when Boston clinched it. I just had goose bumps the whole time. It was like, “Wow, I can only imagine if this was us out there playing the Cardinals and clinching in the stadium where I saw my first big-league game.”
(1) – Cleveland reliever David Riske.
(2) – The toe socks he wears for each game.
