John Schuerholz Quotations

The point of the book was to give fans an inside look at what a general manager does, in terms of personal interaction, in terms of trade-making, in terms of issues that general managers deal with. In this case, I thought I had an opportunity, with literary license, to show a very human side of him. If his point is, 'OK, John, that was a private conversation and I would prefer that you keep it that way,' I understand that.

You don't like to see that happen to any young player. But of all the people that we could have had to endure that, he would have been the best.

What they hear from him is constant support, constant affirmation, constant compliments, because that's his style. He's a positive guy. Even in the midst of difficulties, he's a positive guy.

When we drafted Jeff Francoeur, (scouting director) Roy Clark said, 'This guy's going to be a star,'

We felt it was important to strengthen our bullpen with some talented, more established arms. And we were able do that with Cruz and Reitsma.

We're not announcing it, because we don't know who it is going to be. Bobby has done this many times in the past when we've had openings at various positions. We'll let them compete for it, and whoever impresses the most will get the opportunity to be our closer.

This winter we have set our sights on going back to sort of the old-fashioned Braves way of building championship teams with dominant pitching. That's what we think we have done and we are excited about the pitching staff we have put together for the season.

There are two components. It's a process that keeps our organization filled with talented players because we have excellent people involved in scouting and the minor league system. The second part is Bobby Cox and his coaching staff, who take this talent wherever it comes from and blends it as effectively as any staff in the major leagues can do.

So, in midseason, going full-speed ahead, we had to change our plan and reconstruct our team,

No one person is more important than the next,

My answer is a simple one and an easy one, and it's one that those of you who know me have heard me say before: 'It is good people.' Paul Snyder is the MVP of the good people on the Earth.

Nobody had any expectations except that he could be on our pitching staff and help us win. And that's what I go on.

I'd be very remiss if I didn't offer Leo the best of luck and offer compliments for the great work he's done while he's been here,

Built to Win. After a lot of soul-searching, Tommy decided he was going to stay. Quite obviously, he was relieved. His wife was relieved. And I was bouncing their son on my knee.

Baseball has this ability to get bent by all this, but not broken. It always bounces back. It's very resilient.

I have spoken with (Braves senior orthopedic consultant) Dr. Chandler and we will follow Dr. Anderson's recommendation on a conservative treatment at this time. Chipper will be re-evaluated in four to six weeks, at which time we will assess his healing process.

I hate to lose him for one day. With the way the injury happened and how it occurred, to have this result is very encouraging.

I hate to lose him for one day. But the way that injury looked when it occurred, to have this result from the examination is very positive.

I hate to lose him for even one day. But when you look at what occurred and to have this result, it's very positive.

I feel much better about our bullpen right now.

I can't say we have more passion than anyone else, ... I can't say we have more intuititiveness. I can't say we have more creativity or more imagination, or we work harder. Our own internal expectation is to do those things better than everybody else we're competing against. I'm sure everybody else says the same thing, but our guys have found a way to do it.

I don't think we've seen the best of him yet.

I get into some pretty private and personal matters. I'm glad it's over. It took a lot more time than I suspected it would. But I'm happy with the way it came out.

He was an absolutely outstanding pitcher in the role he took on last year. We tried hard to get him last year for our pennant run and again this winter. Our people evaluated him as one of the top guys in the business in the role he's now doing.

He has been a constant during our string of 13 straight division titles, both with his pitching and his leadership.

He is an all-American-type kid. He's well-spoken. He's mature beyond his years. He has a winner's quality deeper and broader than any young man I've ever seen.

He gives us another piece as we try to construct our team. He's hit .300 as a pinch hitter in the past.

He gets those guys to subjugate their individual egos and blend them into one team ego. It's an ego of one.

He's a baseball player. Offense, defense, aggressiveness - he's got a lot of those qualities you look for. And he's absolutely a rock-solid person. We have our fair share of those.

He's a good young player and he's going to have a fine career. He'll develop like all of our young guys have developed -- at his natural pace. It will happen when it happens.

He's a consummate professional and a man of very high character. When you have a man around like that, that's going to do nothing but help everybody else who is around him. He's had a very positive impact on the Braves' organization and this team.

He's hardheaded, competitive. I've always had great admiration for him.

He's a tough guy and tough competitor. I really have positive expectations for him this year.

He's been part of one of the great pitching legacies in baseball.

He's done it before, and we know he can do it again.

The pain in the forearm is coming from a ligament in the elbow that needs to be reconstructed.

We looked at his time in the National League and we believe when he gets back to the N.L. in Atlanta, he will return to the Renteria of old.

He was one of the first cuts. That should tell you something.

It is somewhat surprising that we've done it with so many young guys, ... It wasn't a part of our master plan.

I think it's obvious. If he doesn't do what he's doing for us, I can only imagine where we'd be. I can't imagine a player on a winning team being more valuable to his team than he's been.

I think this will be cyclical. I don't believe that it will sustain itself. I think, ultimately, people who own baseball teams are going to want a more balanced approach in the person who they name as the leader of their baseball operations, the general manager, rather than someone who's just bright and knows statistics.

I think there have been dramatic changes. We lost our leadoff hitter and shortstop and lost the guy who was our closer and anticipated to be our closer. We lost our pitching coach. Those are dramatic changes that our organization has to deal with.

other than to say that in this clubhouse ... there are some very good leaders and I think their influence in this situation will be very helpful.

Lonnie is, by virtue of what we do and what he does, our adversary. But he does it in a professional way. I'll say that.

I was euphoric. Barry Bonds was a Brave! ... There seemed no limits to what we could achieve over our approaching several seasons.

I think Roger is going to do a magnificent job for us. I'm really, really positive about what he will do for us. Having said that, what we've accomplished in the past is pretty remarkable. If we can continue at that level, I'll be very pleased.

We are aware that there was an incident, ... We will do everything in our power to insure that similar incidents do not occur in the future.

We hope that this is a win-win situation for both sides. We hope that Mike's career can get back on track and he can regain the level of pitching he enjoyed for so many years before shoulder problems got the better of him.

We had to reconstruct the team midway, and in order to do that we had to rely on young guys because our of budget, ... I don't think anybody knew they were going to do what they did, but we made up about 11 games in the standings since that happened, and they really energized the team, quite candidly.

We could not have acquired a more perfect player for us than Edgar Renteria.

Those kind of things are rare. They don't happen very often, and for good reason. It's not anything people can go to any meeting and expect to get done. It just flows out of its own circumstances.

We'll miss him. But we're confident we can continue the great pitching program we've had here in Atlanta.

Tommy went through a purgatory of second thoughts, To me that was a private business discussion and should have stayed that way.

Tommy went through a purgatory of second thoughts.

We don't know what to expect from countries that are not as developed in amateur programs, but this gives us a chance to see players that are underexposed on the international stage perform. We already have a base of knowledge on a lot of the players, and this will enable us to supplement.

We saw it happening and we made an effort to mine this talent we had in the area,

With the core group of leaders we have on this team, it has an uplifting effect on all of the rest of the roster. The environment, which they and Bobby and the coaches create, also has an uplifting impact. People rise with the tide of professional expectations. It's happened here for 15 straight years.

You can't contend for a division title without a shortstop. We got a guy who has been an All-Star, has three years left on his contract and Boston will pay about 50 percent of it. That's why we traded Andy.

We've had some very good discussions, and some good secondary discussions. I've told our guys, something good will come out of these meetings.

We all have concerns; everybody does. We're going to do all that we can to be as smart as we can to get our guys in the best possible condition, principally pitchers, so they're less likely to have an injury problem that would set them back and set us back.

We almost thought there was no need to interview anyone else. When you have a Hall of Fame manager say, 'I really like this guy,' you listen.

We will be scouting every major league training camp, looking for the possibility for that to develop.

We had to do it up against a very strict salary/payroll guideline, and that meant we had to go young in order to afford the replacements on our roster. And if we have to go young, we always prefer to go young with our own guys because we know we've done our due diligence drafting people, checking character of people, learning about their personalities and watching them grow and mature.

Throughout this remarkable 15-year run of ours in which the Braves have had so much success, I'm asked one question and one question only, ... And that is, 'How have you guys done it? How have the Braves been able to continue to win and put a championship organization and team on the field year after year after year?'

What was your word? Bland? ... You might say bland. From his viewpoint, it's effective. It's proper. It's the way a good leader protects his men.

We say that every year and we prove it every year when we bring guys up from our Minor League system and they help us win. This year, we sort of did it with capital letters and neon lights and flood lights on the letters because we had so many of them here. That's a direct tribute to scouting and player development.

We feel that Bobby is the best manager in the game and his leadership has helped the Braves to set a very high standard of excellence -- not just in major league baseball, but in all of professional sports.

We didn't know. But we had the attitude like we always do that we're going to be competitive and we're going to do whatever we have to do to make things work. We had that confidence.

We couldn't have done it without the work that they do. It's true every year. This year it was true to a much larger extent, to a far greater degree.

Bobby is going to have to decide on his lineup to decide who's the leadoff hitter and decide who the closer is going to be, so we have some spots on this roster and on this team that are going to be big decisions. But we have plenty of time and feel we will be able to get it done in spring training.

Everybody wanted to run me out of town. But Nick was going to be a utility infielder, and we needed pitching arms. We got a good one.

And this year, we altered our roster in midstream, which was like changing the tires on a bus going 60 miles an hour. We've accelerated these guys coming to the major leagues by at least half a season. We needed these young guys, and they came up with the goods. They've really saved us.

The viewpoints attributed to John Rocker in no way reflect the views of the Atlanta Braves organization.

The thing about those who called for our demise, so early on in this whole process, was that, after 12 years of doing this in a variety of different ways, up against a variety of different challenges, that we didn't get any more credit than that.

I've always seen that. But I don't know when that future begins.

Probably. To think we could make a deal for a bona fide closer isn't reasonable.

Our doctors say this is an injury that will heal itself. It just takes time. It may not take quite as much time as 15 days, but we want to make absolutely certain that he's completely healthy before he returns, so we're putting him on the disabled list.

Our doctors say this is an injury that will heal itself.

Our doctors say that the injury heals itself, it just takes time. It should take not more than 15 days (to heal). To be absolutely sure he's healthy, we're putting him on the (disabled) list. I hate to lose him for one day. With the way the injury happened and how it occurred, to have this result is very encouraging.

Our doctors say that injury heals itself. I hate to lose him for one day (but) it just takes time. It should take no more than that time and maybe not even quite as much time as the 15 days will provide. To be absolutely certain that he is healthy when he returns, we're putting him on the list.

After 12 years, ... somebody might say 'You know, those guys down there, they certainly know what they're doing.'

The most important thing about that is that when we did that deal, he was happy about it.

Some people come here and play better than a lot of people expect that they will. It's because they're in this environment.

You might reasonably expect one injury to take place, but not as many as we suffered and had to deal with, and sort of manage our way through.

This gives us an opportunity to see if he and his teammates can become a cohesive unit again,

This has been as rewarding as any year I've been in baseball,

They've all been rewarding. Each division championship you win has its own measure of reward. But this year is the most rewarding because we had to (overhaul) our roster in midstream.

You don't force that on anybody, especially a veteran of his stature and with his success. They have to be the ones that understand what they can and can't do, should and shouldn't do.

This particular camp is probably more beneficial than most because Roger has had the opportunity to acclimate himself to the deliveries of each of these pitchers, to put a face to an arm. He's been watching DVDs and looking at statistics. Now he can humanize these guys. So it's probably been more beneficial than any camp we've had in 16 years, from that standpoint.

This kid has a chance to be the next face of the franchise, ... He's been remarkable since the day he was drafted out of high school. He's up for his first major league at-bat, doesn't even have a sweaty jockstrap yet, and he's getting a standing ovation from our fans.

There's a lot of it still on the table. Big piles of it.

It's just enjoyable to watch guys throw. It was a beautiful day, and everything went smoothly. There was nothing out of the ordinary, so it was a good day.

It's a special story. You look at the hometown guys like Kyle Davies, Jeff Francoeur, Blaine Boyer and Brian McCann, and to see the role they're playing on the team right now, there couldn't be a better story in baseball.

It wasn't shocking. It wasn't unexpected. It's a disappointing development. He was a real big part of our pitching staff and pitched sensationally the first part of the season.

It's meant to take readers behind the closed doors of the general manager's office.

It's not like me. But I was convinced by Larry and the publishers that in order for the book to have the attraction we wanted it to have, it had to be real and authentic.

The number of years in a row we've been predicted to fall out of first place. Happens every year.

It's going to be real exciting seeing all of the guys compete. It will certainly be a spot of great interest for all of us.

Everybody has factored into the success, ... Leo was a big part of that... He has received a lot of attention and rightfully so. We've had a lot of success with our pitching.

That's really sort of the unique aspect of it, ... I don't think them being from Atlanta affected us winning, but it just makes the story a little more compelling. It's a wonderful story. And our fans have really taken to them.