Clint Hurdle Took Quotations

Hitting a Major League baseball. I wasn't that good at either one. I think I've got the marriage thing nailed down now and that took me three tries. I know I can't hit the fastball anymore.

We took a chance, but it's not like we were drawing plays up in the dirt. We talked before the game that he wasn't going to get a chance to beat us.

We took steps all over the joint. It's another positive for us.

I thought he took a very positive first step. He didn't get outside of himself. In the first inning he was mid-20s in pitches, but he battled. He didn't give up a big inning after that. Any time there was traffic, he held runners well. He made pitches when he had to. He mixed his pitches. He held the left-handers very effectively. A big outing for him and a big win for us.

We're not going to continually put 20 rookies out there. That's why we took the inventory that we took the last two years to find out what we had, and find a wave that would land and stay on beach, not be sent back out to the sea.

We are moving forward with a large group of players rather than having five or six guys we brought in to bridge a gap for a year. We had our first taste of the process. The first two months, it was a very bitter taste. We took a lot of ridicule. But we hung together. We are not out of the woods yet, but we've taken steps forward.

Every team that added something is hoping that something pops. Their situation is not more removed than ours. We are moving forward with men that showed some value and took positive steps for us.

Everybody that took the mound today was really good.

Initially we stuck him in there because we had run out of options. He is a big kid who has some power and we thought maybe we can find a guy to pick up some run support when they didn't want to pitch to Helton. Obviously he took that opportunity and ran with it. He is a legitimate fourth bat in the lineup. He is not just hitting behind Helton any more.

Their guy was really good. It wasn't anything else. Everybody that took the mound today was really good. They pitched well, hit their spots. We took our swings and didn't come up with anything.

These are opportunities for growth. Everybody made a statement tonight that took the ball.

We tweaked the lineup a little and everybody who got a chance jumped in and took advantage. We finally got out of that hitters' graveyard, Coors Field. That's the beauty of this game. You don't know what to expect.

All the players took to heart the conversations that were held at the end of last season.