I felt like if I was gonna transfer anywhere, it'd be like I was stepping down. I thought, 'I'm gonna have to work wherever I go, so I might as well stay here and work.

We've worked hard for this. Nobody thought we could do it, but we proved everybody wrong in the state of Washington.

We got down four runs, and you would have thought we were down by a lot more.

The way we look at is when [the Detroit brawl] went down on Nov. 19, we thought we had a chance to be champions. The core of our team is 25. With long-term contracts. They will come back at some point.

I never was one to read a bio. ... I never thought I was important. Now any time anybody quotes me or says anything about me or writes anything about me, I'll do a better job of watching it.

We never really thought a lot about that, to tell you the truth. We just kept focused, kept working, kept getting ready.