I think there's a growing number of pitchers who want to have a plan going into a game about how they're going to go after that lineup. I'd say 75 percent want to have an idea, and they plan their attack. I know that 75 percent of hitters do not have that same type of plan against a pitcher.

My wife and I, we started a foundation about companion animal rescue, but there's a group called Performing Animal Welfare Society just outside of Sacramento... and they offered me a job as an elephant keeper.

There's a bigger difference now than when I first got into professional baseball because that was before guaranteed contracts, before there was a lot of money, so it was mostly survival. You had more competition.

Winning in Oakland in '89 was distinguished because that was truly a great team on a mission to prove that '88 was not what we represented. I look at that team in awe. It was a push-button team.