All right, the last piece is here. |
As a player, especially me, I feel like I failed the manager, ... Unfortunately, he has to be the fall guy. If we were 91-71, he'd be voted Manager of the Year. |
Basically, we didn't get the best out of ourselves, |
Bruce is one great baseball mind. During the year, I went to him a lot for advice. Bruce was relied upon by a lot of players on the team. If there's anyone I don't want to see go, it's Bruce Fields. |
Everybody wants to be a hero [instead of] trying to be a piece of the puzzle. I'd say we have great individual efforts, but in order to win, it has to be as a team. Us, not I. |
He has a presence. What he says goes. |
He has a presence. You knew, right from the get-go, he was the manager, and what he says goes. |
He lost the passion for the game. You can't really fault a guy for that, because that happens. And he was smart enough to say the money didn't matter to him. It was his own personal happiness. |
He's a standup man's man, and he's one of those guys you don't want to cross. He gives us direction, and that's all we really lacked. |
He's not happy, but he knows he did everything asked of him and then he went above and beyond the call of duty. It's a total [garbage] move for him not to get called up. It doesn't make sense. You could make that money right back getting people in the stands. They want to see the young guys. Ownership's sending a message that they don't care about their players. You have a great young product and you're afraid to show it. I mean, what more does he have to do? |
I could care less what they question, ... They're not walking around on this leg. |
I could care less what those people think, ... Obviously, they're a piece of [garbage] to say that. |
I know this isn't [Devil Rays manager] Lou Piniella, ... This is ownership worrying about dollars and cents instead of the message they're sending out to their players and the fans, especially the fans. They've pumped Delmon Young ever since he was drafted in '03. They've been pumping B.J. Upton and they've just been getting a little taste. For them two not to get called up [stinks]. |
I put up great numbers, better than a lot of players who got called up around the majors. A lot of them were on contending teams, ... Tampa's going nowhere this year, so they could at least call up the guys who are going to be there in the future. |
I wasn't out there, and I'm a nuisance. I think everybody knows that. In fact, (Leyland) had to calm us down from walking up on the home runs. You can see how it changed from being nice guys to we do have attitudes. There's a lot of attitudes. |