We had him. We talked about it on the mound -- 'The grass is slow here, so hop off' -- and he did. He got there, but he was just a little too quick.

He's kind of a bulldog on the mound.

It's tough. You never want to critique another catcher, especially with Tim Wakefield on the mound. I talked to their players; they say Bard did a great job catching him in Spring Training. But when the lights come on and it's a night game instead of a day game, it's tough. It's the hardest job in baseball.

When you walk off the mound pitching like that against anybody, you're going to get an ovation. When it's against the Red Sox, that's something I don't think he'll ever forget.

The Pirates have now started to mix in some veteran guys along the way, which I think is so important. Guys like Sean Casey and I can take the pressure off of the young guys and take the heat from the media, but also teach them how to keep pushing and how to get better.

Believe me, there's no sense of complacency in here at all. We're going out and giving it everything we've got. Bottom line, we're not getting a lot of love in key situations. We've had some good at-bats and hit balls hard, but we're not getting any breaks. We're going to work our way out of it.