I am truly honored because I know, obviously, what Bob meant to the Twins. I always told myself, when I put a uniform on for the first time in 1998, that I'm going to give everything I have.

I'd say that's a pretty routine play for him.

Hey, it can happen. Who's to say that if we string a group of 10, 11, 12 wins in a row we can't make up this ground? This is what you want.

I preached to a lot of guys in here about playing and finishing strong. It's frustrating for myself to not be able to finish, but I know it's an injury I've had for quite a bit of the season and have played through it. It got to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't.

I'm like, did I just see that? ... I jumped up and said, 'Great job! But don't ever do that again!' Deep down, I was going, 'Man, that's impressive. A spring training game and this guy's going all out.'

I like the feel of our team, man. All the guys have just fit in great and are great guys. I'm excited, I really am. With our pitching and mix of guys we have, I think we're in good shape.

It's kind of always an uncomfortable catch because you can't really consistently expect the ball to be in the same spot. Every pitch does something different. You know it's coming, but you've got to be ready for anything.

This is probably the most painful thing I've been through.

You're not really focused on necessarily getting guys out more than you are trying to execute some pitches. Most of the time, we have in our plan just trying to get ahead with our fastball and mix in some breaking balls.

You've got to suck it up. It shows you what our team's made of. This team has a lot of character. We're not going to give up.