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Raymarkable Milestones: Rays Notch 100th Victory, Advance To ALCS

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By MARC LANCASTER

mlancaster@tampatrib.com

Published: October 7, 2008

CHICAGO - Goggles, plastic sheeting, change of clothes, 200 or so champagne bottles ready to be set free. The trappings of success suddenly have become very familiar to the Tampa Bay Rays.

"We've got five parties to have, we told ourselves," said Grant Balfour, the man at the epicenter of the latest jubilant mob Monday evening. "This is the third one tonight; we've got two more to knock out."

Two more would mean a World Series title has come to Tampa Bay, and the Rays brought that formerly absurd notion closer to reality Monday by beating the White Sox 6-2 to advance to the American League Championship Series.

They'll open play Friday against the rival Red Sox, looking to scratch out four more wins that would permit them to check another party off the list. And the Rays can only hope to go about their work as smoothly as they did Monday in disposing of the AL Central champs.

A pair of B.J. Upton homers off Chicago starter Gavin Floyd within the first three innings not only gave Andy Sonnanstine some room to work but also took a hostile crowd out of the game. And the Rays didn't let up, tacking on a pair of runs in the fourth, then one each in the fifth and seventh - the last two on RBI singles by Carlos Pena.

Combined with another dominant pitching performance led by Sonnanstine and capped by J.P. Howell and Balfour, the Rays had reeled off their 100th overall win of the season in much the same fashion that led to the previous 99.

"We were under control, we played our game again and that's what I'm most proud of," Manager Joe Maddon said.

And all of a sudden, the idea of a party unlike any Tropicana Field has ever witnessed seems increasingly plausible.

"Somebody just said it's eight more wins and it was the first time I had heard it and it's not a lot," principal owner Stuart Sternberg said. "There's obviously a long way to go, there's a lot ahead of us, but eight wins is not a lot."

Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227.

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