Rather than push it, hopefully he'll be back at some point at the end of the year. This injury happened to him a couple of years ago [in Chicago] and it took a long time to heal. We're going to give him that time. |
There was a time when I would not have felt ready to take on this job, just based on my experience, ... There's more to this than just sitting down and taking over the position. There's a lot of things you have to work with as a leader of an organization. |
They tested the stuff Miggy [Tejada] had and found out it was B12 and cleared it and that's the end of the story. |
To be honest, I haven't always been a Red Sox fan, ... The first game I went to was when I was a player [with Yankees]. My dad hated to drive in Boston, so we never came down to see any games. And back then, there was usually only one game a week on TV, and it was usually the Cardinals. I can't tell you I'm a Red Sox fan through and through, but certainly I'm a guy who has admired what's gone on with the Red Sox. |
We have a few things we're exploring, not only there but in other areas. We've been doing that and will continue to do that. If we had been able to sign him, that would have shut down some of those things. |
We like Melvin a lot, ... But whether we proceed on that now or later we don't know. |
We talked about his toe (and) rather than to keep trying to push it ... we decided to give it the time to get healthy again. |
We would like to do something sooner rather than later, so we can get the maximum benefit. But, at this point, so many teams are still in it that they're not ready to part with players, to go down that road and go ahead with it. That's what the wild card has done. It's kept more teams in it. |
We're talking to Raffy right now about that, ... comment on hearsay. |
We're talking to Raffy right now about that. Rather than comment on hearsay ? I don't think it's a proper thing for me to do ? we'll wait and see when we get into the office. |
When it became known that I was going to come up here and interview, a lot of friends from the Boston area and New England who grew up here and went to school here [called me], ... About half of them said, 'Good luck and go up there and do a good job.' The others said, 'What the [heck] are you thinking about?' So you have to keep that in perspective. You can only go out there and do the best job you can. And in this case, for me, I have a World Series ring as a player; I would love to have another one. This is one of the best opportunities in baseball to get there. |
You just see that in spite of all that, he's just not catching up to pitches that I know he would have hit in the past. |
You understand when players can't play, ... And that's the toughest thing. That's not the Tim Byrdak we've seen in the past. He's been a very reliable arm in our bullpen. I think he handled it extremely well. We've seen the crispness of his stuff and when his arm has been tired, like it has been for the last couple days, you don't see it. |