In the Cardinals, though, the Mets may find themselves up against more than a team of exceptional hitters and pitchers. If you can play baseball, you're going to prosper here. You have a good team, a great organization, terrific fans. I mean there is no way you can't play well if you have talent. When Mark McGwire went out with knee injuries, the Cardinals plucked the aging and deteriorating Clark from the Baltimore Orioles.
People come over here and have immediate success because they want to play here.
They are very comfortable here. You try to instil that in people and if guys you think are going through the motions, it's your job to kick them into gear. But the more we kept playing, the more we started tasting the championship, I definitely got more vocal. There have been a lot of young guys here who have never been through it before, and this late in my career, I didn't want to see it slip away. I got a little bit more boisterous.