John Schuerholz Quotations

My answer is a simple one and an easy one, and it's one that those of you who know me have heard me say before: 'It is good people.' Paul Snyder is the MVP of the good people on the Earth.

No one person is more important than the next,

Nobody had any expectations except that he could be on our pitching staff and help us win. And that's what I go on.

There are two components. It's a process that keeps our organization filled with talented players because we have excellent people involved in scouting and the minor league system. The second part is Bobby Cox and his coaching staff, who take this talent wherever it comes from and blends it as effectively as any staff in the major leagues can do.

So, in midseason, going full-speed ahead, we had to change our plan and reconstruct our team,

I hate to lose him for even one day. But when you look at what occurred and to have this result, it's very positive.

I hate to lose him for one day. But the way that injury looked when it occurred, to have this result from the examination is very positive.

I hate to lose him for one day. With the way the injury happened and how it occurred, to have this result is very encouraging.

I'd be very remiss if I didn't offer Leo the best of luck and offer compliments for the great work he's done while he's been here,

I can't say we have more passion than anyone else, ... I can't say we have more intuititiveness. I can't say we have more creativity or more imagination, or we work harder. Our own internal expectation is to do those things better than everybody else we're competing against. I'm sure everybody else says the same thing, but our guys have found a way to do it.

I feel much better about our bullpen right now.

I get into some pretty private and personal matters. I'm glad it's over. It took a lot more time than I suspected it would. But I'm happy with the way it came out.

I don't think we've seen the best of him yet.

Built to Win. After a lot of soul-searching, Tommy decided he was going to stay. Quite obviously, he was relieved. His wife was relieved. And I was bouncing their son on my knee.

Baseball has this ability to get bent by all this, but not broken. It always bounces back. It's very resilient.

He's a consummate professional and a man of very high character. When you have a man around like that, that's going to do nothing but help everybody else who is around him. He's had a very positive impact on the Braves' organization and this team.

He's a good young player and he's going to have a fine career. He'll develop like all of our young guys have developed -- at his natural pace. It will happen when it happens.

He's a baseball player. Offense, defense, aggressiveness - he's got a lot of those qualities you look for. And he's absolutely a rock-solid person. We have our fair share of those.

I have spoken with (Braves senior orthopedic consultant) Dr. Chandler and we will follow Dr. Anderson's recommendation on a conservative treatment at this time. Chipper will be re-evaluated in four to six weeks, at which time we will assess his healing process.

He was one of the first cuts. That should tell you something.

We looked at his time in the National League and we believe when he gets back to the N.L. in Atlanta, he will return to the Renteria of old.

He is an all-American-type kid. He's well-spoken. He's mature beyond his years. He has a winner's quality deeper and broader than any young man I've ever seen.

He was an absolutely outstanding pitcher in the role he took on last year. We tried hard to get him last year for our pennant run and again this winter. Our people evaluated him as one of the top guys in the business in the role he's now doing.

He has been a constant during our string of 13 straight division titles, both with his pitching and his leadership.

The pain in the forearm is coming from a ligament in the elbow that needs to be reconstructed.

He's hardheaded, competitive. I've always had great admiration for him.

He's done it before, and we know he can do it again.

He's been part of one of the great pitching legacies in baseball.

He's a tough guy and tough competitor. I really have positive expectations for him this year.

He gets those guys to subjugate their individual egos and blend them into one team ego. It's an ego of one.

He gives us another piece as we try to construct our team. He's hit .300 as a pinch hitter in the past.

Lonnie is, by virtue of what we do and what he does, our adversary. But he does it in a professional way. I'll say that.

I think there have been dramatic changes. We lost our leadoff hitter and shortstop and lost the guy who was our closer and anticipated to be our closer. We lost our pitching coach. Those are dramatic changes that our organization has to deal with.

other than to say that in this clubhouse ... there are some very good leaders and I think their influence in this situation will be very helpful.

I think Roger is going to do a magnificent job for us. I'm really, really positive about what he will do for us. Having said that, what we've accomplished in the past is pretty remarkable. If we can continue at that level, I'll be very pleased.

I was euphoric. Barry Bonds was a Brave! ... There seemed no limits to what we could achieve over our approaching several seasons.

I think this will be cyclical. I don't believe that it will sustain itself. I think, ultimately, people who own baseball teams are going to want a more balanced approach in the person who they name as the leader of their baseball operations, the general manager, rather than someone who's just bright and knows statistics.

I think it's obvious. If he doesn't do what he's doing for us, I can only imagine where we'd be. I can't imagine a player on a winning team being more valuable to his team than he's been.

It is somewhat surprising that we've done it with so many young guys, ... It wasn't a part of our master plan.

We'll miss him. But we're confident we can continue the great pitching program we've had here in Atlanta.

Those kind of things are rare. They don't happen very often, and for good reason. It's not anything people can go to any meeting and expect to get done. It just flows out of its own circumstances.

We could not have acquired a more perfect player for us than Edgar Renteria.

We are aware that there was an incident, ... We will do everything in our power to insure that similar incidents do not occur in the future.

We hope that this is a win-win situation for both sides. We hope that Mike's career can get back on track and he can regain the level of pitching he enjoyed for so many years before shoulder problems got the better of him.

We had to reconstruct the team midway, and in order to do that we had to rely on young guys because our of budget, ... I don't think anybody knew they were going to do what they did, but we made up about 11 games in the standings since that happened, and they really energized the team, quite candidly.

This winter we have set our sights on going back to sort of the old-fashioned Braves way of building championship teams with dominant pitching. That's what we think we have done and we are excited about the pitching staff we have put together for the season.

Tommy went through a purgatory of second thoughts.

Tommy went through a purgatory of second thoughts, To me that was a private business discussion and should have stayed that way.

We don't know what to expect from countries that are not as developed in amateur programs, but this gives us a chance to see players that are underexposed on the international stage perform. We already have a base of knowledge on a lot of the players, and this will enable us to supplement.

We saw it happening and we made an effort to mine this talent we had in the area,

You don't like to see that happen to any young player. But of all the people that we could have had to endure that, he would have been the best.

When we drafted Jeff Francoeur, (scouting director) Roy Clark said, 'This guy's going to be a star,'

What they hear from him is constant support, constant affirmation, constant compliments, because that's his style. He's a positive guy. Even in the midst of difficulties, he's a positive guy.

We felt it was important to strengthen our bullpen with some talented, more established arms. And we were able do that with Cruz and Reitsma.

We're not announcing it, because we don't know who it is going to be. Bobby has done this many times in the past when we've had openings at various positions. We'll let them compete for it, and whoever impresses the most will get the opportunity to be our closer.

The point of the book was to give fans an inside look at what a general manager does, in terms of personal interaction, in terms of trade-making, in terms of issues that general managers deal with. In this case, I thought I had an opportunity, with literary license, to show a very human side of him. If his point is, 'OK, John, that was a private conversation and I would prefer that you keep it that way,' I understand that.

And this year, we altered our roster in midstream, which was like changing the tires on a bus going 60 miles an hour. We've accelerated these guys coming to the major leagues by at least half a season. We needed these young guys, and they came up with the goods. They've really saved us.

Bobby is going to have to decide on his lineup to decide who's the leadoff hitter and decide who the closer is going to be, so we have some spots on this roster and on this team that are going to be big decisions. But we have plenty of time and feel we will be able to get it done in spring training.

What was your word? Bland? ... You might say bland. From his viewpoint, it's effective. It's proper. It's the way a good leader protects his men.

Everybody wanted to run me out of town. But Nick was going to be a utility infielder, and we needed pitching arms. We got a good one.

You can't contend for a division title without a shortstop. We got a guy who has been an All-Star, has three years left on his contract and Boston will pay about 50 percent of it. That's why we traded Andy.

The viewpoints attributed to John Rocker in no way reflect the views of the Atlanta Braves organization.

We say that every year and we prove it every year when we bring guys up from our Minor League system and they help us win. This year, we sort of did it with capital letters and neon lights and flood lights on the letters because we had so many of them here. That's a direct tribute to scouting and player development.

We feel that Bobby is the best manager in the game and his leadership has helped the Braves to set a very high standard of excellence -- not just in major league baseball, but in all of professional sports.

We almost thought there was no need to interview anyone else. When you have a Hall of Fame manager say, 'I really like this guy,' you listen.

We all have concerns; everybody does. We're going to do all that we can to be as smart as we can to get our guys in the best possible condition, principally pitchers, so they're less likely to have an injury problem that would set them back and set us back.

We've had some very good discussions, and some good secondary discussions. I've told our guys, something good will come out of these meetings.

We couldn't have done it without the work that they do. It's true every year. This year it was true to a much larger extent, to a far greater degree.

We didn't know. But we had the attitude like we always do that we're going to be competitive and we're going to do whatever we have to do to make things work. We had that confidence.

The most important thing about that is that when we did that deal, he was happy about it.

After 12 years, ... somebody might say 'You know, those guys down there, they certainly know what they're doing.'

The thing about those who called for our demise, so early on in this whole process, was that, after 12 years of doing this in a variety of different ways, up against a variety of different challenges, that we didn't get any more credit than that.

Some people come here and play better than a lot of people expect that they will. It's because they're in this environment.

With the core group of leaders we have on this team, it has an uplifting effect on all of the rest of the roster. The environment, which they and Bobby and the coaches create, also has an uplifting impact. People rise with the tide of professional expectations. It's happened here for 15 straight years.

I've always seen that. But I don't know when that future begins.

This has been as rewarding as any year I've been in baseball,

They've all been rewarding. Each division championship you win has its own measure of reward. But this year is the most rewarding because we had to (overhaul) our roster in midstream.

Probably. To think we could make a deal for a bona fide closer isn't reasonable.

Our doctors say that injury heals itself. I hate to lose him for one day (but) it just takes time. It should take no more than that time and maybe not even quite as much time as the 15 days will provide. To be absolutely certain that he is healthy when he returns, we're putting him on the list.

Our doctors say that the injury heals itself, it just takes time. It should take not more than 15 days (to heal). To be absolutely sure he's healthy, we're putting him on the (disabled) list. I hate to lose him for one day. With the way the injury happened and how it occurred, to have this result is very encouraging.

Our doctors say this is an injury that will heal itself.

Our doctors say this is an injury that will heal itself. It just takes time. It may not take quite as much time as 15 days, but we want to make absolutely certain that he's completely healthy before he returns, so we're putting him on the disabled list.

This gives us an opportunity to see if he and his teammates can become a cohesive unit again,

You might reasonably expect one injury to take place, but not as many as we suffered and had to deal with, and sort of manage our way through.

Again, I think we've earned more than that. It hasn't been just one year, or two years. It's been 12. Consecutive, record-breaking years. That buys a little credibility.

I'm sure somebody can. Maybe some day. Maybe some day.

I never talk about anything we do in our business, especially as it relates to rumors. I wonder if those general managers are as interested in what's going on with their ball clubs as they are in ours.

I made the decisions that had to be made, ... I never really thought: 'Wow, what are we doing? This is bizarre. Have we lost our collective organizational minds? What's going on?' I never really thought that. I thought each of these kids could answer the call and do what was needed of them and could pinch in. They have. All of them were direct responses to specific needs that we had at the time. I think they all made sense to us when we did them. I don't know that there was any unorthodox one. Maybe Joey Devine, because there hasn't been anyone drafted in our organization who has been on the playoff roster that same year.

I knew that, in time, they and everyone else on the team was gonna see what we had put together.

I have no comment as it relates to the sale or the announcement of the sale. I will continue to do my job in the same manner I've done it every day I've been here.

If you assume the worst, you have to also assume with modern medical technology he'll be fixed and may very well be ready for the next several years.

the best five starting pitchers we've ever had.

The best third-base prospect in baseball. He has awesome potential, excellent power and a good glove.

It's been exciting, fun, energizing. These kids are walking the walk for us right now.

It's better than most everyone expected. We're hopeful.

His defense was consistent and eye-opening at times, and that got him in the lineup. And the more he played, the more he hit. He was really a big part of our improvement and our success last season.

I hope he gets in there. I think he is a very deserving candidate and wonderful human being. He'd be a very wonderful recipient.

I haven't thought about that. I'm thinking about Mike and his health.

He's too good a catching prospect to do that now. We like him where he is. He's getting better and better behind the plate.

He's an accomplished, veteran hitter who has had big hits through the years as a pinch-hitter, including some in the postseason. That's something we had targeted.