I thought it was better to at least play some Triple-A and wait for an opportunity than to not play at all.

[Football is] definitely more popular. People follow it more. A lot of guys, even in this room, will plan their Sundays around football.

You can’t ever do it on your own. In my case, just getting back here, a lot of people had a hand in that.

There are a lot of reasons why I like it here, but the biggest is because it’s home. I love the people . . . and I wouldn’t want anything else.

Ninety nine times out of 100, there’s no way I even put that ball in play. Somehow, it hit the barrel of my bat. I don’t know why I hit it, or how it happened.

It was a combination of us not swinging the bats and he was throwing it well.

You get saturated with baseball,

[Garland] wasn’t picking at the corners. It was more like, ‘Here’s my fastball, now put it in play.’ That’s what we need from him. It was like he just went out there and tried to...

I just got lucky, I think.

He just tried to wipe the last two starts out, and he went out there and tried to start over.

I can live with that start 35 times a year.

You play against Boston, the defending world champion. New York is the 26-time world champions. [The Angels], they just won the World Series two years ago. We should be kind of under the radar. They’re...

I love to watch baseball because I understand it, and I’m a big fan of it. But [with] football, I can watch a whole game. With baseball, I’ll usually watch an inning-and-a-half and turn to...

I think he battles out of tough spots now and it’s not a matter of him throwing a pitch and hoping he gets the guy out. I think now you’re seeing the real Jose Contreras...

You play with him and you realize that it’s all part of his fire. You take the good with the bad.

Forget winning the World Series. I enjoyed playing baseball for the first time in a long time.

What we have here is a checks-and-balances system. Ozzie says whatever he wants. And Kenny is the voice of reason.

You know people. Everybody wants to see a train wreck.

You’re not going to please everybody,

[Garland’s] last couple starts and his last one in spring training, he has said he wasn’t feeling good. He said he wasn’t hurt, but he said he was tight, he was having trouble getting loose...

He still can be just as dominating when he wants to. I think sometimes now, when he makes a mistake, it may get hit a little bit more often, because he doesn’t throw 98 or...

I don’t think people give him enough credit for being as smart as he is, … Now we’re talking about that instead of something negative about the team, so I guess that’s a good thing.

He’s always in the middle of any controversy, so it couldn’t happen to a better guy because A.J. is used to it. He can handle it better than everyone.

I think he was 100% correct. We all knew that. It wasn’t a surprise. It’s probably surprising he held it in that long.

I probably will go get a copy of that film and keep it, just so I can say I did it one time. Honestly, in this game, you get lucky sometimes, and sometimes it’s better...

I didn’t play on any of the other teams in the past 88 years here, so I’m not part of that history, … I’m on the 2005 team and that’s all I really care about.

He’s always in the middle of some kind of controversy, … It couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Because A.J. is used to it, so he can handle this better than anyone else on...

It’s disappointing to not get this one in. We ran into a red hot team that’s swinging the bats well and they’re playing well at home.

[Hitting coach Greg] Walker showed us before the game that he gets most of his outs on inside pitches. We were looking for pitches out over the plate and looking to take them up the...

I do feel badly for (Eddings). I know that’s part of it, that when you’re an umpire you take (garbage). You’re always going to be wrong whether it’s for one team or the other team....

There were 26 the other day when he spoke to pitchers and catchers. He spoke for five minutes. He was doing well, and then he strung together a few at the end. He gets excited...

For us to play as well as we did, that was like the ‘re-turning point’ in our year. We got back to being ourselves, and it’s carried into the playoffs.

It’s another game off the schedule, … Until they tell us it’s clinched or everybody else is mathematically eliminated, we’ll try to win every game.

It’s nice to get out there and get back into the flow a little bit. Try not to think of the memories of last year. It’s a new year, and we have a lot of...

It’s been about a month that he’s changed on the bench. He’s not as loose and happy go-lucky as he was but, hey, that’s the way it is.

I pretty much did it last year anyway, so there’s no real difference. I’ve done it before in Montreal. It’s actually easier for someone that doesn’t play every day to handle it, so you have...

It’s one of those freaky things that happen. It’ll probably never happen again.

We’ve got David Carr and Michael Vick at quarterback. We’ve got Marvin Harrison and Roy Williams at receiver. … Hey, A.J., who’s our running backs?

Theresa tells me things happen for a reason.

I didn’t realize it was up around my shoulders. If he makes that pitch 99 more times, I probably strike out 75 times and pop up the other 24 times. I just got lucky, I...

They’ll both be OK. Right now they’re both going through the dead-arm period that they would normally go through in the spring.

We’ll do more down the road, but this will help as a quick fix.

Oh, yeah, it’s been noticeable for a while now,

He’s the kind of guy, if you’re on the other team, you hate playing against him. When he’s one of your teammates, you know why he does certain things.

We call our team ‘The Backbone.’

(The Daily News report is) just someone trying to stir something up and cause a problem who was flat-out lying in the paper.

He won’t know what he just did.

I had an opportunity to play in the World Series and actually play in a game and get meaningful at-bats. To be in that situation . . . it didn’t sink in until I got...