We’ve got to hold our heads up high. We have a lot to be proud of. Obviously, right now, it hurts. But we tried our hardest. If you look yourself in the mirror and say you tried your hardest, there’s nothing else you can do. This is baseball. It comes after your family’s health and well-being. There are more important things in life. Hopefully, this will motivate us to work harder in the offseason and come back next year.

It was a hard night. So many weird things happened. Manny’s ball took a crazy hop in the first inning. I remember that play, because you kind of roll your eyes and go, “Here we go again.”

We just needed one more win. We came close, but that’s a good team. That’s all you’ve got to come back to. They beat us. For all of us young guys, we got a taste of what the postseason was like. Hopefully, we can learn from it. You have to.

I’m going to take three or four days off, then get back to the weight room and start getting ready for next year. I’m excited about having a whole offseason where I won’t have to go to the Arizona Fall League or play winter ball or anything. This will motivate me, and it should motivate all of us.

But this game’s over. Talk is so cheap now. We need to come out and play tomorrow, and so do the Red Sox. And that’s all. The time for talking about stuff is over. It comes down to one game.

We just need to remember how far we’ve come. If you would have told us last year or the beginning of this year that we’d be in this position, we’d take it. We need to cherish this opportunity.

Game 7s are what being in the playoffs is all about. We’ll see what happens. As a kid, you dream about it. Someone will be a hero tomorrow. It might be someone from this clubhouse or it might be someone from over there. We’ll wait and see who it is tomorrow.

I still think we’re in a good spot going back to Fenway Park. If you would have said we’d go back to Boston up 3-2 rather than down 3-2, that’s the more important part for us.

I thought Youkilis hitting that home run and them scoring first was big. They got the clutch homer tonight, which we had been doing. We just couldn’t get the clutch hit tonight. It seems like the games we lose, we just don’t get the clutch hit. That happens. Sometimes you just get beat. That’s what it felt like tonight. Their starting pitcher just beat us.

During that Lofton-Beckett scuffle, I was watching my last at-bat down below. They had a second TV on, but they didn’t really show it. It’s funny, because, as a player, there’s no dumber feeling than being the last guy to run out on the field. Chris Gomez and I were down below watching my at-bat. We come out there, and you try to act like you’re mad, but you don’t know what’s happening. By the time you get there, the situation is already cooled down. It’s a dumb feeling. You feel like, “I should have just stayed down there watching film.”

So now we’ll go back to Boston and face Curt Schilling in Game 6. You have to live in the present. Schilling has re-invented himself. He used to be a great power guy, but he’s still tough. He mixes up his pitches and hits his spots. But that’s the Schilling we’re facing, and we have to remember that. We’re not facing the Diamondbacks in 2001. We’re facing the Red Sox in 2007.

What a team effort tonight. The stadium was loud. This is what you dream about as a player. Both teams were just waiting for something to happen early on. It was great that it was us that made something happen. Casey’s home run obviously set the tone for that big fifth inning. That’s the thing with the knuckleball. Some of them were nasty, and some we were just missing. Casey finally caught one of them. There’s nothing better than putting up a seven-spot in any game. To do it in this game tonight, that’s about as much fun as you can have. It was like a party in the dugout.

I’ll take credit for Jhonny’s homer. I told him to move up in the box, because some of Wakefield’s knuckleballs were just downright nasty and down in the zone. I told him to move up, and he just laughed. I don’t usually give guys tips on days I’m not playing, but I sometimes do with Jhonny, just because we talk about hitting a lot. But I usually don’t want to bother guys when they’re locked in. When I’m not playing, I kind of live through Jhonny, because I know he’s trying to go deep with every swing, just like me. And he did it tonight. I loved it. It seems like every game I don’t play, he goes deep. I get to mess around with him and towel him off and give him a cup of water.

Byrdie was great again tonight. He did the same thing Jake did. He just threw strikes and went after them. Hopefully, he starts getting the credit he deserves. We all kind of laughed when everybody was talking about how he shouldn’t have gotten that start in New York. Now he’s gone out and shut down two of the best offenses in the league in back-to-back starts.

We’re in a great situation, with C.C. going on Thursday. We’ve leaned on him all year, and we’re excited to have him out there. But it’s going to be tough. Josh Beckett’s one of the best pitchers in the league. One of the hardest things to do in sports is to finish a team off, because now they can go up there like they have nothing to lose. We just need to remember what we’re all about. Even though we’re up 3-1, we’re still more or less the underdogs that are on the verge of doing something special.

I thought Dice-K’s stuff was better tonight than it was during the season. He ran a couple up there at 95 and 96 mph. He didn’t do that during the year. But obviously, Kenny got that hit, and that was big. He’s been talking about his power. He finally showed it tonight That was just another clutch play out of him. He’s been clutch all postseason.

I forgot how loud it gets here at Jacobs Field. Once again, our fans were just as loud here as the fans at Yankee Stadium and a lot louder than Fenway Park. They’re into the game, and they’re great fans. You can’t say enough about them. Every time somebody gets two strikes, they’re into it. Every time we get someone on base, they’re into it. It’s a lot of fun to play in that environment.

People talked about the momentum carrying over from Saturday’s win, but the biggest momentum tonight was Jake getting ground balls when we needed them. That’s the only momentum you can feel as a player. I made that error in the second, and when he got out of that jam, there was nobody happier in the stadium than me. That’s what we’ve been doing all year is picking each other up, and he really picked me up right there. I told him I’d go out and try to get a hit and score a run for him to make up for the error. It ended up working out later that inning, when I got the hit and Kenny hit that homer.

Tuesday’s game is really important. The fourth and fifth games of seven-game series, to me, are always the important ones. At least, as a fan, it seems that way. I’ve never been in one before. But when you’re watching a team and rooting for a team, those are usually the games that matter the most.

We kept the home-field advantage tonight. It was big to win this first one at home -- to keep everyone excited and to keep our focus on winning the next one.

My cousin, “Big Body” Erb, texted me today. He’s back in North Carolina now. He was probably out somewhere watching this game tonight. He’s bugging me about getting him a signed bat to put up in his room, but he’s going to have to wait until after the season. I don’t remember him asking me for a signed bat when I was in Buffalo.

We were all really tired, more mentally than anything. First of all, the start of the game was 8:20, that's something we never do all year so you have all day to sit around and think about the game.

Then it seemed like every at-bat was long. There were no quick outs, every at-bat seemed to have four, five and six pitches. And a lot of guys were getting on base, that always slows it down. As a position player it can be mentally tough. You've got to stay up mentally because a ball hit to you could be the difference between winning and losing. You have to be ready because you never know.

We were tired but there was still a sense of accomplishment because we knew we had done something difficult in winning a game like that in Boston.

The plane ride home was fun. You had the usual RBI baseball video game going in the back, the card games in the middle and most of the guys eating or sleeping up front. Vic Martinez, who seems to have unlimited energy had his music on.

A bunch of guys got up Sunday and went to the Browns game. I slept too late to go, but I'm going to watch the Patriots-Cowboys game, have a nice dinner and get a good night's sleep. We didn't get in until 7 a.m.

I have a lot of family coming in this week. My parents are coming in from California. They haven't been here since April. They got rattled by the snow. They were here for four or five days and didn't get to see one game. They went to games in Anaheim and Oakland but said they weren't coming back to Cleveland until the playoffs. Well, the playoffs are here.

During batting practice, they were showing a video of that ’96 Yankees team, and talking about how they pulled wins out of nowhere and had guys come out of nowhere to pull off victories. I was thinking, “That sounds exactly like the 2007 Indians.” It’s nice to do this here at Yankee Stadium, because, obviously, they’ve had a dynasty the last 10 years or so. Maybe we can do the same thing now. We’ve got a lot of young guys and a lot of young players and young superstars like Grady and Travis and Vic. Going out on that mound and seeing these fans celebrating there was incredible. Who would have thought it? You look at their lineup and the names in that lineup, and it was definitely David and Goliath. It was a tall task.

I think it’s always more fun to be the underdog. But at the same time, when we sat down as 25 guys, we knew we had a better record, we played in a tougher division, we had a better pitching staff and we have a lot of great young players. You can’t buy into the name on the front of the uniform or the name on the back. You’ve got to go out and actually play the game. That’s the way I looked at this series. The reason we struggled so much with the Yankees during the season was it was the first time we faced guys like Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina. This time around, it was just like, “Who cares?” They’re not any better than Johan Santana or Justin Verlander or Mark Buehrle and all those guys we played against all year.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the lineup tonight, because Kelly Shoppach caught Paul Byrd and Vic went to first base. All I thought about is that it’s cool that Eric had the courage to do what we’ve been doing all year and do what got us here to the playoffs. If you start C.C. on three days’ rest, you don’t know what you’re going to get. If you catch Vic with Byrd, you don’t know what you’re going to get there, either. This is how we won our division and won games, and we went with it. I’ve had some of my best games of the year coming off the bench when Byrdie starts. Who cares? It’s all about getting wins now. I was ready to go if we needed to, and I was actually hoping I wouldn’t get in there tonight, because that would mean we won. And that’s how it turned out. We had a meeting when the playoffs started, and Eric said, “Just be yourselves. Don’t do anything different.” If he started getting out of character and changing things, what message would that send to us?

We’ve been doing great things all year but haven’t been getting attention for it. There are probably people who never watched an Indians game. This series gave us a chance to show we have superstars like Victor and Grady… quiet, humble superstars that don’t get enough attention. Maybe they will now.

The coolest thing about these celebrations is that this is the best team I’ve ever played on where all the guys like each other and have fun together. It might look like we’re out of control when we’re celebrating, but it’s all genuine. It’s just been a lot of fun playing with these guys.

P.S. To all the Yankees fans who wrote in, thanks for your e-mails. See you next year.

Roger Clemens was not pitching like the guy I grew up watching. It’s too bad. You don’t want to see a guy get hurt. You want to try to beat their best and all that. It was cool facing him, though. I was real excited to get the opportunity to face him.

It was nice to take a lead early. We came out and we weren’t overwhelmed by anything going on. But the game took a turn in the middle innings. Still, we didn’t quit. We battled off their bullpen. It wasn’t invincible. And that’s the second time we’ve found a way to get to their bullpen. We continued to put up good at-bats. But we couldn’t get that three-run homer. They did. Both teams played for the big hit or the big home run. They were the ones who got it.

Obviously, we’d like to wrap this series up as soon as possible. But we know we’re playing the Yankees, and they have a lot of great players. We just need to do what we’ve been doing all year. We can’t afford to get tight. It’s not our personality in this locker room. The veteran guys won’t let us. Besides, we’re still sitting in a pretty good place right now.

People talk about changing the rotation for Game 4, but you’ve got to go with what got you here. Paul Byrd is our fourth starter. I bet you C.C. has never pitched on such short rest, so you never know what you’re going to get. And it’s not just our goal to win this series. We want to win the World Series. We want to win the whole thing. You go with your guys who pitched well all season. You don’t panic right now, and I think that’s what starting C.C. on short rest would show is panic and making stupid moves. So we’re going to go with the rotation we used to win the best division in baseball.

But I also think about all the playoff games that have played here. We’ve all seen the playoff games since ’96 or ’97. We know what it’s going to be like. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be Roger Clemens in Yankee Stadium in October. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The trip here to New York was fun. I sat in front of Victor Martinez and Rafael Betancourt on the plane. They were blasting their music and having a good time. It was big that we won that game Friday in that fashion, because the plane ride was so much fun. It would have been a drag if we had lost.

We’ve still got work to do. Once we landed, we knew that game was over and the celebration was over. It’s time to start getting ready for Game 3.

With the off day we have a chance to exhale a little bit. But as soon as we stepped onto the field for batting practice today, you see it’s Yankee Stadium and it’s October, and everybody kind of realizes the moment.

My brother and sister and my aunt and uncle are coming into town for the games here. My brother Michael and I can’t stop talking about October baseball in New York. It’s going to be cool. A lot of it is surreal and hasn’t really sunk in with my family yet. My mom and dad have been at home in California watching on TV. They can’t believe it. It’s been my dream since I was a kid.

You really want to win these kinds of games, because there’s so much emotion. Because when you go into extra innings and start using all your pitchers, it’s tough. It would have been a tough flight going to New York losing a game like that after all the opportunities we had.

The win is big, because, if we lose this game, it would have taken away all the momentum we had from Game 1. And we would have had to go into Yankee Stadium  needing to win a game, or else our season would be over. To win is just nice. The Yankees are a team of All-Stars, and it’s Yankee Stadium in October, so it’s going to be tough to go there. But we’re not going to relax. Eric’s not going to let us relax. We have to play this next game just like it’s an elimination game, because it’s the playoffs and we’ve got to get after it. But obviously, the pressure’s not going to be what it could have been.

It’s not like we go to New York and relax and see what happens. We need to keep focused. By no stretch can we relax one bit, just because we’re up 2-0. It’s about winning three games, not two.

The bugs caused a lot of drama tonight. But Fausto didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. That says a lot about him. You’ve got to give him credit. There was some adversity thrown at him. That might have been my favorite part of the game. He didn’t step off the mound once, and the other guys on the Yankees were acting like there were bullets flying around their heads, not gnats. I mean… this is the big leagues.

My grandparents [Frank and Vera Rimolt] were in town from Pittsburgh for these two games. They’re loving this. That Yankee mystique hangs over everybody. You throw out the records, and it’s still a David versus Goliath kind of thing. My grandparents were sitting at dinner Thursday night and just kept saying, “I can’t believe you guys beat the Yankees.” They remember all those great players on the Yankees. All of us do.

We knew coming in that C.C. and Fausto were two aces. They’re pitching like it. Hopefully Jake and Byrdie can carry this on.

I came up in my first at-bat with two guys on and two out. I was so bad all year with guys in scoring position and two outs. It was nice to wipe the slate clean and trade in all the times I got out in the regular season for one postseason RBI with two outs. It was great, in that sense.

I had never faced Chien-Ming Wang, so it was a weird spot. I always hit fifth, and I’m always hoping if I come up in the first inning that there’s going to be guys on base. That was a great spot to come through in, because it changes the momentum. If Wang gets me out there, he goes back to the dugout and it’s still 1-0. Two-out hits are golden. They’re the best kind of RBIs you can get.

On the solo home run in the eighth, I was behind in the count, 0-2. I was in battle mode. Phil Hughes has got a great fastball. I was just choking up and trying to put something in play. I was fortunate to get a fastball. It was down the middle. That was so exciting to get a home run on only my fifth at-bat in the postseason.

The win was great, but this is just Game 1. We can’t lose sight of it being a five-game series, not a one-game series. We need to keep playing hard. Early on, they got up early, and we’ve struggled against the Yankees all year, and it was kind of like, “Oh man, here we go.” But one thing Eric [Wedge] has talked about all year is separating. If you’re up five, you can get up eight. If you’re up eight, you can get up nine or 10. You have to put people away. That’s what he’s said from day one, and that’s what we did tonight.

Andy Pettitte is a great pitcher. He’ll be ready in Game 2. I don’t care if we lost by 20 or won by 20 tonight. He’ll be ready to go. We’ve got to be just as ready to go tomorrow as we were today.

The thing we talked about the last three days in the workouts was to enjoy this. Instead of putting pressure on ourselves, we want to go out and have fun. This is what we worked for -- as individuals and as a team -- for all our lives. The last thing we want to do is go out there and be tight and try too hard and squeeze the bat too hard and all that stuff. Tonight, we just got in the box and we were just let everything go. You saw that with the home runs. We were letting it go. We were trying to get out there and do something with the opportunity. Because who knows if we’ll ever have another one like this?