Chris Carpenter
Chris Carpenter
Christopher John "Chris" Carpenteris an American retired professional baseball starting pitcher. He played 15 seasons in Major League Baseballfor the Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals from 1997 to 2012. A Cy Young Award winner and two-time World Series champion, he was also a three-time All-Star selection. In addition, he was twice named the Sporting News National League Pitcher of the Year, and voted for a number of Comeback Player of the Year awards for surmounting injury...
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth27 April 1975
CityExeter, NH
When I came back last year, I had in my mind I wasn't going to take anything for granted, ... I knew where I was in 2002, and all of a sudden, it was taken away from me. It's your dream and you're playing in the big leagues and it's all you've ever wanted to do.
I hate losing, never mind losing that way, not being able to make an adjustment and get the ball down in the strike zone. It's just an angry, disgusting, embarrassing feeling.
It's a great feeling, ... There's not a lot of people that come from this area, never mind play in the big leagues.
I try not to let it enter my mind because, again, we've got a long way to go, ... We've got a month left. I've got to go out and continue to compete for the rest of the month, and our main goal is to give ourselves a chance to be in the playoffs.
There's not a lot of people that come from this area or this state that play in the big leagues, never mind win the Cy Young, ... To be part of that is unbelievable and to be part of this situation is unbelievable. I can't believe I won.
It's huge. We need Jimmy in the lineup every day to come out there and compete every day and be a big part of that offense, never mind his defensive play. It was nice to see him back in there and doing what he did today. Hopefully we can get him on track and he can start feeling better.
When you do that it's tough for them to elevate the ball.
We've got to forget about tonight. We didn't win it tonight, we just won one game.
You hope that you win. But when you're talking about the quality of seasons those other guys had, there's nothing you can say about it (if someone else won).
We had that last year, we have that this year.
We've got a great club, ... We've got to continue to play the way we've been playing in this series to continue to move on.
We clinched and there was nothing on the line anymore,
We have five guys who have been here before. At this point in the season, if you don't have a guy on the mound who believes that he can be that No. 1 guy, you're not going to have a whole lot of success. We have five guys who can go out there and win at any time.
I got my work in and I'm ready to go. I kept the ball down.