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Pressure? Rays Prove They Can Thrive On It

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - It was Dr. David Ortiz, that 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 at the way, into the very eyes of the 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?

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

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

"Not one person out here is scared," Rays DH and semi-Popi Cliff Floyd said. "Scared of what? We weren't supposed to do nothing, remember?"

They had to do something in Game 2.

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

And we did.

In took forever. It took a game that rose and fell and fell and rose, a instant classic, homer-happy marathon, an insane game that left everyone at the Trop drop-dead exhausted.

The Rays live.

We don't know how they did it.

And that really doesn't matter.

"We never say die," Rays reliever Dan Wheeler said.

All we really know, for sure, is that at 1:35 a.m. Sunday morning, B.J. Upton lifted a shirt fly down the right field line and a road runner named Fernando Perez slid past Red Sox catcher and Gaither High graduate and across home plate in the bottom of the 11th inning for the 9-8 victory that tied this ALCS.

Check out the faces, Big Papi.

Exhaustion.

Exhilaration.

"I didn't see their faces," Floyd said of the Red Sox.

"All I saw was our faces, and they were smiling," Rays pitcher James Shields said.

It took 5 hours, 27 minutes. It took nearly any and every Ray to win this game. September call-up Perez scored the winning run and September call-up David Price got the win.

You stood, stunned and amazed, again.

What had just happened?

"Same thing that has been happening all year," Shields said.

"That's been our story all year, guys from everywhere," Floyd said.

"We have a lot of heart," said Wheeler, who might have had the biggest in Game 2.

We could go into all that went before, from another rocky Scott Kazmir outing (is he really any good to this team right now?) to all the assorted home runs and heroes, from Upton to Evan Longoria to Carlos Pena to Carl Crawford to Wheeler to Price to Perez and back again.

But let's start in the eighth, when we were relatively young. The Rays had been behind 2-0 in this game, then 4-3, then 6-5, but found themselves clinging to an 8-7 lead going into the against the defending world champions as the eighth began.

Wheeler entered the game with two men on and no one out.

He induced a ground-ball double play. Boston runner Dustin Pedroia moved to third on the play.

But then a fastball got away from Wheeler. It flew over Rays catcher Dioner Navarro's head and banged off the backstop. Navarro fielded it, but made a limp underhand toss to Wheeler covering at the plate. The ball rolled away. Pedroia scored. It was 8-8.

"He could have folded there," Upton said.

He didn't. Instead, Wheeler went on to pitch scoreless ball after that, and finished up after 3 1-3 innings, his longest outing in two years.

Never say die.

Everyone ran on fumes.

For the Rays, the booster shot was to look in the stands and see that most of the sellout crowd hadn't left.

"Amazing," Upton said.

David Price came entered the game as the seventh Rays pitcher in the top of the 11th after Wheeler gave up a walk. Price promptly walked another Boston batter. Two on, one out.

David Price has been a Ray for less than a month.

He struck out Mark Kotsay.

He got out of it on a fielder's choice.

"Guys from everywhere, like I said," Shields said.

It was well into Sunday morning.

"I've never been in anything like this," Upton said. He added, "On these kind of games, you're pretty much running off adrenaline. The more tired you get, when you think you don't have anymore, it all comes back to you."

Isn't that this team?

Hasn't that been this team all season?

Again and again, people have waited for their tank to run dry.

There was no getting around the abyss that faced the Rays with a loss in Game 2. The team with the best home record in baseball would have lost twice at home before heading to Boston for three games with the team with the second best home record in baseball. It was even more than that. In League Championship Series history, 10 teams had fallen behind 0-2 at home. Not one of them lived to see a World Series.

But, no.

"We don't stop until it's over," Upton said.

And then it finally was.

Dioner Navarro worked a walk off Mike Timlin to open the bottom of the 11th.

He was replaced at first by a pinch runner: Fernando Perez.

Perez had been waiting for hours, patiently and then impatiently. He spent nearly an hour, off and on, riding an exercise bike in a hallway near the Rays dugout to keep those legs fresh. If the thing hadn't been a stationary bike, he would have been in Ocala by the time the game ended.

"I walked around with a helmet on for two hours," he said.

Ben Zobrist walked. First and second.

Perez tried to steal third as Jason Bartlett grounded out to third. Perez was safe.

And then Upton lifted that fly ball.

Perez and Rays third base coach Tom Foley hadn't really exchanged a word.

Perez wanted to go. He kept looking at Foley as if he was asking his dad for the car keys. He wanted to go.

Foley said c'mon, c'mon …

"And then he flew by me like Secretariat," Foley said.

What a night.

What a morning.

What a season.

It lives, you know,

Look in their eyes.

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