“A Gold Glove would be one of the things I would really cherish. When I was younger, I was always smaller. I couldn’t hit, so I had to work on defense.”

“I want to be better every year, just like everyone else does. From what I learned from last year, I feel a lot more comfortable. I know the game and how it goes up here. You get in certain situations the first time, you really don’t know what to expect. Now that I’ve been in them—and I’ve been in every situation possible last year—there’s nothing new to come at me.”

“You don’t have to be cocky, but if you don’t believe in yourself, you got no shot. You got to think you’re good. If you go up there and you’re scared of Smoltz because you see him on TV, and you don’t think you can do it, you got no shot.”

“I just like to play the game.”

“I’ve gotten stronger, but I don’t ever try to hit home runs. I stay with the same approach, just hit line drives. If you get under one and it goes out, it’s a home run, but I don’t feel any pressure to hit home runs.”

“If you dive and make the play, that’s great. If you don’t, maybe you shouldn’t have made the play anyway. As long as you make the routine plays, everything else is kind of a bonus.”

"A lot of teams aren’t going to let me beat them. I just try to do something each game to help us win. If you do something like that, whether it’s a walk or a hit, your numbers will be there by the end of the year."

"You want to have expectations. I think it makes you work a little bit harder now, and it makes you want to prove to everyone that it wasn’t just a one-year thing."

"It is nice to have the fans recognize you, not because it makes you feel like a big-time player, but because they enjoy watching baseball and they like watching us play. It’s going to get even better being here. Pretty soon, the city could be one of the best places to play."

© Copyright 2007 Black Book Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.