A winning player is nothing more than a player on a winning team. A losing player is a guy who played on a losing team that year.

Nobody likes to hear it, because it's dull, but the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same - pitching.

I wanted no part of losing. Why play if you can't beat the other guys more often than they beat you?

I told the team last night this isn't about winning or losing. At the end of the year, our message has to be that we persevered. If we go 11-0 ... if we go 0-11 ... they're not going to know our record. They're going to know we persevered. For the millions of people affected in our environment — the ones who survived — it's going to give them some hope. Because right now there is no hope.

A manager has to convince his hitters that they have to get on base for the next guy and that no player can do it by himself. Sometimes that isn't easy. In the playoffs, you can get into trouble because everybody wants to be a hero.

We always learn more from the losing than the winning.