"I will be patient with the young pitchers and players. There's no question about that because I know how these players develop,'' he said. "But as far as missing the playoffs - if we miss the playoffs by the end of this year, I don't know how patient I'll be. But it won't be against the players. It won't be a matter of that. It will be a matter of maybe certain people in the organization could have done something else.'' ...

"Don't make any mistake about it: Our team in the late 90s beat everybody, and we beat everybody because we were that much better than everybody,'' he said. "And they had just as many players doing stuff - all the teams. I guarantee you go through every team in baseball, and they all have the same basic percentage of players doing stuff. They just weren't as good as us. You think the Red Sox didn't have players doing stuff back then? Give me a ... break. They just weren't as good as us, and neither was anybody else.'''