Maintaining focus
I took my time getting out of here last night. I stayed and just enjoyed the fact that we had won Game 1. Once I got home, I was done. I tried to do a little packing for the road trip, but my eyes were burning and I finally had to tell my wife that I had to go to sleep. All my energy was spent and I knew I needed rest before I came back out there and doing this again today.
All of my kids are off from school today, tomorrow and Monday, so I got a chance to spend some time with them and got a bite to eat together this morning. I got up a little earlier today, but otherwise stayed with my routine.
It was nice to get the win in Game 1, but your focus in Game 2 has to be the same. In the playoffs, it’s all about who can focus the most and take the extracurricular activities and push them aside. At this point in time in the year, whoever focuses the best is the one that’s going to put themselves in position to win.
I think the guys came out today ready to play. We continue to remain focused for 27 outs. Not two innings, not four innings, so we knew when they got out to a 2-0 lead, there was still a lot of baseball left to be played, and in the dugout we talked about just focusing on putting together solid at-bats and take it from there.
And that’s what we did. We settled in and got a big two-out knock by Chris Young and then another two knocks by Stephen Drew and Eric Byrnes, so the guys did an outstanding job tonight.
We’ve had our success this year with pitching, defense and timely hitting. These first two games we’ve done exactly that. Tonight we knew we were going to have our hands full with Ted Lilly, so we didn’t try to do too much. We just tried to keep the pressure on him and put together solid at-bats.
I know that we’re up 2-0, but there’s still a lot of work to do. We start back up on Saturday and we need to try to come out that day and try to win a ballgame regardless of whether we’re up 2-0 or not.
What impresses me is their ability day in and day out to grind for 27 outs. It’s fun to watch. It’s exciting because their professionalism has been rewarded thus far.
We’re going to be up all night tonight flying, so tomorrow will be a rest day, and we’ll try to make the two-hour adjustment as quickly as possible. It’s best to get out tonight and get there as quickly as you can and go from there.
Talk to you from Chicago on Saturday.