Oct. 7 Jim Leyland pregame interview

Q. Obviously you're focused on winning the game last night, did you give yourself a second at any point of the night to kind of soak in the atmosphere with the crowd going crazy, the third playoff since you've been here?

JIM LEYLAND: I think you're really aware of everything, but you don't really see it. It's kind of like a blur. But I knew going in what the atmosphere would be like. It's kind of a given here. Even during the regular season, the atmosphere is pretty good.

So I think the difference is the white towels they're waving and everything. They hype it up pretty good for the TV and everything. It's kind of interesting.

But I knew there would be a lot of excitement. It always seems to be that way here.

Q. What's your message to your team with one game down, one win already in the pocket, knowing that the last three potentially are in Oakland?

JIM LEYLAND: Well, I don't really have any message for them. It's a quick turnaround here today. We're hitting inside. We're not going to change anything. We're not going to hit on the field. Normally for these day games like this we don't. We're not going to change anything.

There's no message. Everybody knows it's pretty simple. We've got to win two, they've got to win three. It's pretty simple math, really.

So there's no message. Everybody knows this time of year what you've gotta do and what it takes. I thought last night was a much more important game for us, really, than it was Oakland.

If we would have come out of that with a loss, that would have been pretty really tough on us, I think, because of the psychological part about beating Verlander. If they would have beat Verlander last night, that would have been a psychological edge to them. It certainly wouldn't have meant the series was over. Had they beat Verlander last night I think that would have done wonders for them.

So I thought that was really kind of a must win, to be honest with you. And this team is this is a team that's they're very resilient. They lost the 14 inning game to the Yankees I think I want to say it was exactly two weeks ago yesterday, and the next day they come out and beat up on the Yankees pretty good.

So this is what this Oakland's team's all about. We have our work cut out. It's nice to get the 1 in the win column.

Q. Talk about what Fister has done for this franchise since picking him up and early signs today to know whether he's on?

JIM LEYLAND: Well, we'll see. I mean, he's struck out a few more people than we thought we would when we first got him. I call him a miss hit guy. They make him miss hit the ball. You never know what's going to happen. He's certainly been very good for us since coming over.

Normally not a whole lot of standing around. There's going to be some action when he pitches. Even though he's had some strikeouts, your defense always knows he's going to normally be around the plate and they can put the ball in play. That's a good thing.

But you just never know what it's going to be like. They got a good pitcher, we got a good pitcher, that's what playoffs are all about. You're going to see a good pitcher for both teams every day. So we'll see how this one plays out.