Those games were going to give us visibility and some extra money, for starters. From the get-go, we knew that in order to gain credibility and respectability and have the chance to shock the world, we were going to have to play with the big boys.

He wouldn't let us have a bad practice,

We didn't swing the bats well for three games really. They [Braves pitching] had to create the runs for us the first game with a bunch of walks, and really we should have won that game Saturday - that's the one that was the killer. Really, we were never in command today.

This was just one of those games where we got it handed to us. We'll put it behind us, and we'll play better (today).

He came up big defensively to keep us in the games, especially in the shootouts.

We had some guys who made plays on offense. But we had 15 or so negative plays. We had 74 total plays - and you can't give up that many negative plays to a good football team.