Peter Magowan Quotations

If we'd known he wasn't going to play a game this year, would we have done it? Obviously not.

We've been through this sort of stuff a lot in the past. I admit it was not as much as it is right now. The more he can play the better. I don't know what that number is. I think it has to be more than 14.

I think it's good for us to get an idea what '06 might look like. If we don't play these guys this year, then we don't know and we have question marks that affect all the offseason plans.

I suppose I could get disenchanted with Brian with poor results. In this game, people have to stand on their record. He knows that. That's the way it is in baseball. But I expect Brian always to do well. He's smart, he's creative, he works hard and he's got a good team of people around him.

I think, from all that I've seen and from that all that I've heard, he's going to do fine. You never know. He could trudge out to left field at any point and his career could be over. He certainly seems to be able to still hit a baseball. He says he's not in pain. He hasn't done the really tough stuff yet. I'm sure that will happen within the next three weeks.

Bonds will be supported in San Francisco. We know our fan base pretty well.

Even though the timing is difficult for us, we'll survive. We'll get through this. I think Ned has enough integrity, that even though he is aware of our strategy, he's not going to steal our people or attempt to steal people that we're discussing final arrangements with. I think Ned can draw a line in the sand.

A trade? They can't trade me. I'm sorry.

They're taking a position which is totally understandable. They celebrate records and this would not be a record. I think if it was Aaron, then it would be a completely different situation.

Everyone says he can't run the bases, and he can't play left field, ... Obviously he's not the player he was, a Gold Glove player. He never had the greatest arm in the world, and it's supbar now. (But) to say he's a totally one-dimensional player ... He might not be able to make a running catch six or seven times in a game, but he can do it once or twice when he needed to and did so last year.

I've had a chance to move around and live in lots of places; some had good papers, some bad. As a citizen I depend on that paper. If it is a good paper it makes that community a much better, nicer place to live.

These things are always easier to say in retrospect that you shouldn't have done it. We did it because I think he deserved it. He asked for it. Based on what he had done for the Giants , I think he deserved it at the time. He played more games than anyone else on the team - 152 games - he was the MVP again. Possibly by showing that respect for him and what he had done for the Giants , it might have been another motivation and inspiration for him to give the best he possibly could for the Giants .

If not a reasonable thing to do, at least it was an understandable thing to do. It's so easy to write we should have seen it coming, but you could have written that in 2004, 2003 or 2002 or 2001. He's an old player by baseball standards, and yet he was better than anyone else all of those years.

I recognize this is a serious matter. It is still a legal proceeding, that's all I can say. ... I can't comment on any of this. It's the position we've taken for two years now.

If I absolutely knew, I wouldn't tell you what we're doing because we want it to be a surprise. But what I will say is that it will be short and sweet. We don't want it to be disruptive in any way to the game itself. If it happens on the road, then we would do something before the first following home game.

All this speculation that he's no longer a National League player, that he's only fit to be a DH, all that goes by the wayside,