That was a masterful performance by Chris Carpenter tonight.
It was a great night all around, from introductions on through the game. It’s an amazing feeling, as a fan, as a player, as
coaches, anybody that’s here for the first time and is experiencing this for
the first time, it’s just joyous. It’s definitely one of the best feelings I’ve
ever had, just to stand there and see the sea of red and hear them cheering for
us. It was amazing.
You know what’s funny? With Carp, and at times when Jeff Suppan
and Jeff Weaver have pitched like that, or when Anthony Reyes pitched in Detroit,
the game just went by so fast that we couldn’t even enjoy what he was doing. When
the sixth, seventh, eighth inning came along, we looked up at the scoreboard and
we were like, "Are you serious? It’s that late in the game already?"
Usually, we pinch-hitters start getting ready around the
fifth or sixth. But those pitching performances have been top-notch, to where
we were surprised — not by their performances, but by how we didn’t recognize
where the game was.
Now they really can’t win it in three. But we just let people
say whatever they’re going to say about us being up 2-1. We’re going to stay
within ourselves, within our family and go out there and play our best
baseball.
It was 43 degrees at game time, but as far as we’re concerned, the weather is beautiful. We’re thinking of it as Hawaii right now.