Feb. 27 -- MORE EATON

BY SCOTT LAUBER

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Here's some more from our chat with Adam Eaton, and you can check our story in The News Journal for even more. ...

Asked if he felt pressure last season to live up to his three-year, $24.5 million contract (known from now on, in this space, as Pat Gillick's Blunder): "I wanted to go out and have a good year. Obviously, it didn't happen. I got off to a relatively good start and had nothing to show for it. This day in age, it's what have you done for me lately. Regardless of leading the team in quality starts until the All-Star break, two starts later, three starts later, I'm cast off in the bullpen. Granted, there were a lot of horrible games in there, but there were some good ones, too. It's tough. Getting beat up still, you're trying to do so well, it's tough. But the pressure of wanting to perform and weighing your salary to how you should perform, it doesn't really affect anybody. Once you're between those lines, it's man versus man. It's not, 'He's making 400 grand, I'm making 8 million.' If that was the case, then the Yankees and Red Sox would win the World Series every year.

Asked about his decision to go home instead of the Florida Instructional League last October, and therefore not attending the World Series or the victory parade: "The only thing I regret about not being there for the World Series was not sharing it with my teammates. Organizationally, you know, whether they weren't thinking, 'Would Adam be here? Would he just show up, or should we invite him?' There was never a conversation there. I never thought about coming because, I was like, they're doing so well, I didn't want to show up and say, 'Hey guys, look at me.' I think that would be a little two-faced on my part. I weighed my decision very carefully before I was given the opportunity. I was not going to make the playoff roster, obviously. I haven't pitched in the big leagues since whenever, July. And they say, 'Well, go down and get in shape.' Give me a [bleeping] break. What do you want me to say? You want me to swallow another pill? For what? Waste two weeks down here where I can go spend two weeks with my family? Yeah, sure, I'll go up there for the World Series. Hey, I'm up on the float. 'Boo, [bleep] you.' Great. Would that be any fun for anybody? No. In that regard, not sharing it with my teammates. But it was nice to see them on TV. They're world [bleeping] champs.

Finally, when Eaton was asked about leaving his teammates from the last few years, he began to well up. "A lot of good guys in here," he said. "That's the hard part. It was only two years, but there's a lot of names in here that should be well-respected."