Oh What A Night... The Tampa Bay Rays and Destiny...

Noooooooo Waaaaaaaay!... that just happened.  (or)  Oh, what a night!  (or) A meditation on how the final games of the regular season in 2011 may have been the single greatest night of baseball in Major League history.

You gotta be kidding me!

So, just like that, I am headlong back into baseball.  What an incredible couple of hours we experienced last night!  It just goes to show you that if you can have a final night of the season like that, you can recapture the hearts and minds of the country in a hurry.  Wow.  Four teams entered the night striving for the last two spots left in the playoffs; The Cardinals, Braves, Rays, and Red Sox.

The Cards won easily and guaranteed themselves at least one more game early on, but the other three games… were wild.  The Phillies scored in the ninth to tie up the Braves and then eventually broke their collective playoff hearts in the 13^th.  Baltimore scored two runs, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to shock the Sox in dramatic fashion.  The Rays, on the other hand, took it to another level.

Watching the Rays last night was as close to watching a Sports Film as I’ve ever seen in real life.  The Rays were down seven to zero heading into the eighth inning.  It looked like curtains.  (Meanwhile the Red Sox were stuck in a rain delay leading Baltimore 3-2 in the 7th.)  It was looking like the Sox were going to win and, if the Rays were lucky, the best they could do was force a one-game playoff.  Yea.  All they had to do was score seven runs in two innings.  And, as we all know, that just doesn’t happen very often in baseball.  Well not in real life anyway…

But by the end of the eighth the Rays had incredibly closed to within one run at 7-6.  Whaaaaat?  Was this really happening?  You could see the looks on the faces of the Tampa fans.  They were excited, they felt the energy, but they had to be cautious.  They knew that those six runs wouldn’t matter at all if they couldn’t get just one more.  All over the stadium, diehard Rays fans were donning their Rally Caps, their faces frozen with an odd a mixture of disbelief, longing, elation, and extreme nervousness.

The next thing I knew it was the bottom of the ninth, Rays still down one.  There were two outs, and two strikes  Everything was on the line.  And up at the plate was a pinch hitter no one had ever heard of named Dan Johnson, whose batting average for the season was a less than balmy .105.  The Tampa announcers had already swerved into concession mode; they were thanking their producers and various crew members on a great season, thanking the fans for their support… the fans looked on with the expressions of condemned people awaiting their final moments, when, suddenly, CRACK!  A shot, deep to right!  He didn’t!  It’s not possible!!!  He did.  It’s GONE!  The crowd was in shock, as was I.  It was unreal.  The Rays had tied the game.  Were the Rally caps working???

Fast forward to the top of the 12th.  The Yankees had runners on the corners quickly with nobody out.  All they had to do was score one run to put the Ray’s hopes of advancing in serious jeopardy.  But they couldn't score.  It was just crazy.  And suddenly, Tampa was looking like a team of destiny.  They were not to be denied.  Not on this night.

Cut to the bottom of the 12^th. Two out.  The news of the Red Sox loss had spread throughout the stadium.  The Rays were guaranteed at least one more game, but you just felt that there weren't satisfied yet.  Up comes Evan (don’t call me Eva) Longoria.  The stadium was percolating.  They could feel it.  They knew it was happening.  Cue the heavily orchestrated underscore and the slow-motion tilt down from the Yankees pitcher (Scott Proctor) as he winds up, then cut to a slow-motion tilt up on Longoria, waiting intensely, his eyes focused like laser beams.  Here comes the pitch.  The crowd holds it's breath.  And then… CRACK!  It can’t be.  But it is.  It’s GONE.  Solo shot.  Game over.  The Rays had done it with a walk-off home run.  It’s what they used to write poems about… like Casey at the Bat.  It’s what grandfathers tell their grandkids… I’m telling you.  I’ve been around for years, and this stuff just doesn’t happen.  Not in real life.

The Rays (the sports world’s ultimate underdog) had gone from almost certainly being out of the playoffs, to solidifying their spot IN the playoffs within a span of about 20 minutes, and the Red Sox completed their historic collapse.  And the rest of us just went along for the ride.  The final drama of the Sox losing and the Rays winning actually happened within three minutes.  You couldn't script this stuff.  It’s why we love sports.  It’s why we just have to tune in at the end of the season.  And I know it seems like I say this every year, but I can't help it.  Baseball is back, folks.

No Rays fan will EVER forget what that game felt like last night.  And some fans go their whole lives without knowing that kind of elation.     

Because a night like last night was as close to magic as anything can be.
At least in real life. 

This is the Underdogs.

And we OUT!

Enjoy the Playoffs.                    

The day the Blue Jays stole the Red Sox's Mojo...

Aaaah yes.  It’s that time of year again.  The time to acknowledge that baseball exists.  I know, I know… this is the third straight year that I’ve said this but, how much longer could a 162 game season seem?  Why does it seem like they play 262 games???  Maybe it’s because this is the third straight year that the Mets have been so far out of the pennant race that they make the proverbial Tortoise look like Usain Bolt (Bu-DuM Chiie!!)  But honestly folks, why does it seems like most baseball fans checked out months ago?  The answer, of course, is because they have.

This is not the NFL.  Baseball fans watch their teams and don’t really follow the others.  And that’s fine.  It's actually a pretty refreshing sports notion these days, when most people care more about their fantasy teams and individual performances than actual games.  But that same wide-sweeping notion seems to have diminished a good portion of the “National pastime’s” flair.  Does anybody care about the ole Ball Game anymore?  Case-in-point, Matt Kemp of the LA Dodgers entered the last week of the season with a legitimate chance to win the triple-crown!  It hasn’t happened in forty-five years, and since 1937, only four guys have done it.  But has anyone mentioned this?  Except for those faithful that bleed Dodger-Blue, nope.  National headlines?  Not many.  Seems like that’s baseball these days. 

But!  Now comes the best part.  We get to jump back in at the last minute (and pretend we’ve been paying attention all along.)  Because, for the Boston Red Sox and (the 2008 Underdog-of-the-Year) Tampa Bay Rays, that 162 game season has come down to ONE game.  It’s beautiful.  The whole nation will be anxiously tuning in tonight to see if those amazing Rays can pull another miracle (with a payroll total of around one-fourth of the one that Boston pays out, by the way.)  And naturally a whole lot of people will also be tuning in tonight to see if the Saux will complete a historic collapse.  No team has ever lost a playoff spot after having such a large lead at the start of September.  The Mets in 2007 come to mind though, when they lost 12 of their last 17 games and unbelievably Laaaame-ified their way out of the post-season (*tear.)  But the Mets only blew a seven game lead.  These Sox were up nine.

About 3 weeks ago, right about the time when things started to go sour for the Sox, they were here in Toronto, and I went out to the Rogers Center (Formally called the Sky Dome, of ’92 and ’93 World Series Fame.  Joe Carter anyone?) along with a couple of my Disney pals, Jarek, Brigid, and Miss RedSox herself, Eve… or as she would say it Miss REEEEEDDDD SAAAAAAUUUXXXXXX!!!!

It was a beautiful night and the Dome was open, providing a spectacular view of the CN Tower.  To say that the stadium was one-eighth of the way filled might have been an overstatement, but whataya want right?  It’s September and the Jays were way out of the race.  Sound familiar?  Anyway, it was still a blast, and a good game.  I was amazed at how absolutely terrible Tim Wakefield looked on the mound for the Sox though.  I mean, I know that Knuckleballers inherently look pretty bad because the ball comes out so slowly.  Plus I think Wakefield is around 45 these days and, as the girls pointed out early on, it kinda looks like he has a beer-belly.  So it seemed a little bit like old-timer night in that regard, and the Jays were rocking him.  The Sox offense gave him a lot of help though on the scoreboard.  Which included a monster home-run from Big Papi (or David Ortiz if ya not hip), that, oh by the way… EVE CALLED!!!  Seriously.  She called the shot!!!  Jarek and Brigid as my witnesses.  Eve declared “BIIGGGG PAAAAAAPI IS GONNA HIT A HOOOOOOMMMMME-RRRUUUUUNNNN!!!!”… and two seconds later, CRACK!  He did.  I had never seen that before in my life.

So even with old man Wakefield giving up five runs early, the Sox still had an 8-5 lead going into the bottom of the eighth.  It had been sprinkling on and off and was starting to get a little chilly (sadly, not enough for them to close the roof though, because I would have loved to have seen that!  That thing weighs 11,000 tons!!!  A little bit more than the anchor weighs, right Chris?  I'll explain later.)  But anyway, things seemed in-hand for the Sox so we decided to take it on home and leave early.  We committed the Cardinal Sin.  Eve figured Boston had done enough to win it and I maaaay have mentioned the fact that they “were definitely going to the playoffs anyway”….. um…… Oops.

Toronto scored Five runs in the bottom of the eighth and won the game.  Boston has dropped 9 games in the standings since.  Whaaaaaaat?

The moral of this story.  It ain’t over til it’s over, folks.

Sorry Eve!  (Aw, look how happy she was in the seventh inning :)
    

Either way, we already have Underdogs Galore in the baseball playoffs this year; the Rangers, Brewers, Tigers, Diamondbacks!  It's gonna be a good one, I can feel it.  Is there room for one more long shot?  Or can the Sox turn it back around?  

Tonight will tell.  

Thanks for reading.

and Goodnight from Canada,

Underdogs OUT.