Manny Acta Baseball Quotations

I believe that part of what the World Classic did was remind people that baseball talent comes from all over the world. There are a lot of people playing this game.

I think everybody in baseball knew, even before the All-Star break last year, that we were going to play this Baseball Classic, and everybody that had the desire to play prepared themselves to play for this tournament. Yes, they didn't have 100 at-bats or whatever before this, but we got all the way to the seventh game. We played two rounds, the guys saw enough pitches, they had enough at-bats. There are no excuses.

I think it's going to be a terrific atmosphere. The four teams here are going to have good baseball.

There are no favorites in baseball. You can do it in basketball or hockey or any other sport, but in baseball there are no favorites. Our country expects a winning team and we are OK with that. We are going to go round-by-round, but we don't want to let our country down.

They always say the most important pitch in baseball is Strike 1. It's even more important now.

There's still a lot of baseball left in Sosa, he's only had one bad year and has a lot to offer the Dominican team.

If you're going to get hurt, you're going to get hurt, whether you're in spring training or the World Baseball Classic. But I want everybody to understand, we're not going out there only trying to win and forgetting about our players. We have a responsibility to the organizations that are allowing the players to play, and we're also going to try to get them ready for the regular season.

This park brings back good and bad memories. We fell short, but it was good to make it here. Our expectations were very high because of the team we had, but I also understood that in baseball you never know because it's a very short tournament and anything can happen. I still think when you look at the size of the country where we come from and the number of players we have, we have the best athletes.

It's a short tournament and we have to stay humble about it. It's baseball and anything can happen. We feel very good about the group we got here. We actually have the group we wanted and they seem to have the special love to play for their country.