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Gross' Magical Day A Family Affair

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By MARC LANCASTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 2, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Not long after a 10th-inning, game-winning home run no one could have predicted rocketed off his bat Sunday afternoon, Gabe Gross thought of his family.

His parents, Lee and Betty, and his 78-year-old grandmother, Sara Charles Gross, had driven down from Alabama to spend some time with him over the weekend and his father had said they might not stay for all of Sunday's game if it went too long.

Lee Gross runs Ozark Striping, a contractor outside Dothan, Ala., that specializes in painting lines on roads. He usually gets up for work around 4:30 a.m. each day because it takes a while to get there and the office phone usually starts ringing by 5:45. With a schedule like that, they didn't want to get home too late Sunday.

So Gross didn't know if his family was still at Tropicana Field when the first walk-off homer of his career gave the Rays a come-from-behind 4-3 victory against the White Sox until he spotted his father in the tunnel outside the Rays' clubhouse. He kept on jogging past the clubhouse door and the two shared a long embrace that from a distance appeared to include some tears. Not long after that, Gross' mother, grandmother and wife, Kelly, emerged to join in.

"I know my dad, and if there was any chance that I was going to still be in the game and the game was in doubt, he wasn't going anywhere," Gross said. "But I didn't know for sure that they were still here and I saw him out in the hallway and that was just kind of nice."

The Rays' latest victory was another collective effort, but Gross' contributions were an unexpected bonus. Joe Maddon told the outfielder Saturday that he would get a rare start in the series finale, and the Rays' manager seemed almost apologetic in explaining his reasoning for the move prior to Sunday's game.

You see, Gross simply doesn't hit left-handed pitching, and the White Sox had a seasoned lefty on the hill Sunday in Mark Buehrle. It was only the second start of Gross' big-league career against a lefty. But with Carl Crawford already out of the lineup to get a bit of a rest and Jonny Gomes in left field, Maddon put Gross in right field mostly because of his glove.

When Buehrle struck out Gross for the second out of the third inning, the 28-year-old's career numbers against lefties read like this: 6-for-64 (.094), one RBI, 32 strikeouts. He was 1-for-10 with eight strikeouts against southpaws this season.

Yet there he was the next time up, smacking the first pitch he saw from Buehrle in the fifth inning into the gap in right-center for a two-run triple that tied the game 3-3 as Gomes and Shawn Riggans came racing home. And again leading off the 10th, after Andy Sonnanstine, Grant Balfour, Al Reyes and J.P. Howell had kept the White Sox in check to leave the score where it was.

Chicago reliever Matt Thornton, who had held lefties to a .133 average (4-for-30) before Gross stepped in, got ahead 0-2 in the count. But his next pitch was a slider that stayed up and Gross hammered it, sending it an estimated 409 feet out to right to trigger yet another home plate mosh pit.

"That's unbelievable," Sonnanstine said.

"I couldn't be happier for him," Carlos Pena said.

As happiness goes, the Gross clan surely carried the day. This was hardly their first time celebrating success, as Gabe's father starred as an offensive lineman at Auburn (where Gabe played quarterback before devoting himself to baseball) and played four years in the NFL for the Saints and Colts.

But this was one of those moments that saw everything come together perfectly, leading to an emotional gathering that surely livened up the six-hour drive to come.

"If you know our family very much, you know we're a bunch of criers," Gross said. "My grandmother lent that gene on down through everybody and it's not surprising to see her cry over a special moment. She's awesome. She's there pulling for me in everything I do and so is the rest of my family. They're pretty awesome."

Their son (and grandson) wasn't too bad himself Sunday.

Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227 or mlancaster@tampatrib.com.

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