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.

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

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.

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

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.