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Grand Finale: Slam Puts Exclamation Point On Rays Sweep

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By CARTER GADDIS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 20, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - The Rays might look back on these three days in June and remember them fondly as the moment a franchise collectively became one of fortune's favorites. Only with the perspective that comes at the end of a 162-game season will they know for sure.

But an 8-3 comeback victory to clinch a three-game sweep against the Chicago Cubs? The team with the best record in baseball? Managed by a Tampa native, Lou Piniella, who once inhabited the office currently occupied by his managerial successor, Joe Maddon?

In front of a Tropicana Field crowd of 34,441, no less.

No, Thursday night was not about perspective. Thursday night, hyperbole was OK. It was OK, also, to begin to believe that the Rays just might have a lot more nights like this ahead of them before they reach October.

"To beat them here, under these circumstances, based on their prestige within the game right now, it is important," Maddon said. "And it is something that we have to look at, obviously, in a highly positive way. And hopefully, it's going to catapult us even further."

There was something eerily familiar about the way Carl Crawford circled the bases after his seventh-inning grand slam off Cubs reliever Scott Eyre gave the Rays the lead for good.

He admitted he had a flashback to Piniella's first game as Rays manager in 2003, when Crawford's walk-off home run against the Red Sox got Tampa Bay off to a 1-0 start in the Piniella Era.

That was one of the bright moments in a dark decade of baseball. Thursday's homer, which came after Cubs reliever Carlos Marmol loaded the bases by walking two Rays and hitting two more, was another sign that those days are done.

"It seems like the question that always gets asked is, 'You think you guys are just as good as the best teams? Are people getting ready to believe you're a good team nationally?'" Crawford said. "I think so. After winning three games like this, it'd be hard to argue that we're not one of the good teams in the league."

In fact, the Rays have the third-best record in the majors - 43-29. They are 14 games better than .500 for the first time in franchise history.

It also was the first time the Rays swept the team with the best record in the majors, and - most telling - it was Tampa Bay's third sweep of the season against a team in first place.

The seven runs scored by the Rays in their half of the seventh were an emphatic answer to Chicago's three-run seventh. Tampa Bay starter James Shields had cruised through six before Mike Fontenot's run-scoring double and Kosuke Fukudome's pop-fly single gave the Cubs a 2-1 lead.

And with Marmol on the mound, the Cubs seemed well-positioned to rob the Rays of their sweep. But Chicago's usually reliable reliever self-destructed, walking Willy Aybar and Dioner Navarro before plunking Gabe Gross and Akinori Iwamura.

Just like that, the Rays had a free run. Crawford turned on Eyre's second pitch, a 1-0 fastball, to send the Cubs back to Chicago hoping that they don't look back at these three days in June with the kind of bitterness normally reserved for billy goats and black cats.

A new curse? No, just a new contender.

"They're still going to be a good team," Crawford said. "We're just trying to position ourselves as one of the elite teams right now."

Reporter Carter Gaddis can be reached at (813) 259-8291 or igaddis@tampatrib.com.

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