TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Floyd Doesn't Buy Ortiz's Diagnosis

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARTIN FENNELLY

mfennelly@tampatrib.com

Published: October 12, 2008

Updated: 10/12/2008 02:11 am

ST. PETERSBURG - It was Dr. David Ortiz, noted Boston psychologist and Red Sox wall banger, who made the first diagnosis.

Sitting in the winning dugout Friday night for Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, with time to kill between DH turns, Ortiz looked across the way, into the very eyes of the oh-so-green newcomers, the Tampa Bay Rays, and saw something during the Sox's 2-0 win.

"I'm telling you, I saw faces different tonight than what I saw in the regular season." Ortiz noted.

Pressure? Doubt? Fear?

Ortiz did everything but wave a watch to put the Rays into a deep, deep sweep.

Most of the Rays dismissed it. Some chalked it up to mind games.

But their longest-tenured major-leaguer stepped up.

"If we lose, we lose because we didn't perform. Not one person out here is scared," Rays DH and semi-Papi Cliff Floyd said before Game 2 on Saturday at the Trop. "Scared of what? We weren't supposed to do nothing, remember?"

The Rays had to do something in Game 2.

"We'll see what we're made of tonight," Floyd said.

'It's Playoff Baseball'

We've long know what Floyd is made of - you can see it in the way the younger Rays (only Troy Percival is older) gather at his locker. Floyd serves up truth, each and every day. He doesn't come to them. They come to him.

So there was Floyd, a leader, standing in the Rays dugout to drive home a point or two about Papi's analysis, and then driving a home run to dead center early in Game 2.

Look into his eyes.

"It's playoff baseball," Floyd said. "If you start to worry about what people say, then it messes up what we've done the whole season. We haven't cared about what one person's said this year."

It wasn't really a throw down with Big Papi.

"I love him as a person. I love him as a player," Floyd said.

Ortiz isn't known for mind games, so he honestly must have seen something in those wayward Rays swings in Game 1, which included Floyd leaving the bases full in the first inning of that game.

This is what Big Cliff saw after Game 1:

"If you'd come in the training room ... you'd have thought we won."

Floyd will tell you that some of these Rays are too young to be scared, or too tough. He'll tell you how this team has rolled all season, win or lose.

There was no getting around the abyss that faced the Rays if they lost Game 2. In League Championship Series history, 10 teams had fallen behind 0-2 at home. Not one of them lived to see a World Series.

"Is it pressure baseball? Hell yeah. If you don't win, you go home. Does it change how you play? I don't think so," Floyd said. "Not one bit. Maybe Ortiz saw something he hadn't seen during the course of the season, but when has playoff baseball been something you see during the season?"

Rays Simply Got Beat

Big Papi talks about studying faces.

Big Cliff doesn't.

"I haven't studied nobody's face the whole damn season - my whole career. The only person I try to study is the pitcher."

He added, "I can tell you one thing, and this is from the bottom of my heart - we were expletive ready to play yesterday. We just got beat - by a good team and a good pitcher. Period.

"... We haven't won anything yet, but in our hearts we've done a great deal of coming together as a team, and that's what we believe in. We could care less about what people think of us or whatever. We believe in that clubhouse, and I think when you have that team unity, it's hard to beat."

Look into his eyes.

We dare you.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT