They would just follow whatever I did. They had no say in anything. Grier was an eight-year vet, and I was a rookie. Basically, it came out like I was the leader of the pack. And it just rolled.

Last year, with a No. 1 seed, we might have gotten a little relaxed. Now everybody's hungry. I think we have more fight.

[With all the no-shows, it was up to an old vet to keep up the festivities. Aretha Franklin , on hand to collect the Lena Horne Award for outstanding career achievements, brought down the house with crowd-pleasing performances of] Until You Come Back to Me ... Respect.

That's been the pattern all year, ... No matter how many runs we have, whether it's one or eight or nine, we never have a run we didn't need. At this point of the season, it doesn't matter how we won, it just matters we did it.

He'll probably need six to eight stitches in the lip, but that's about the way the ball has bounced for us this year.

These companies are in it for their dollars, and whatever is hot that is what they follow.