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A Team With Heart To Spare

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By MARTIN FENNELLY

mfennelly@tampatrib.com

Published: October 13, 2008

BOSTON - We could come up with a catchy name, like the Midnight Ride of Fernando Perez.

Only it was an hour and 35 minutes after midnight. It was Sunday morning at Tropicana Field. More than a few Rays fans might have gone to bed not knowing how Game 2 of the ALCS would end.

They woke to another hero from nowhere.

The Rays arrived in Boston on Sunday. Exhausted or no, there was a hop to their step. There had been since Perez's daring tag and dash, off a B.J. Upton short fly out and against J.D. Drew's arm, that ended an unforgettable 11 inning, 9-8 must win against the Red Sox.

It was a game the Rays needed, and Perez knew it as he Usain Bolted from third base in the predawn hours. Ninety feet later, with a slide and a resounding slap of home plate, the season lived. Perez got a bloody lip on the play - from being tackled in the celebration.

"Last night, do you believe it?" Carlos Pena said Sunday afternoon in the visitors clubhouse at Fenway Park. "... I don't even know how my heart can take it anymore."

It's a team with heart to spare.

Perez, just 29 games into his major-league career, got it done. So did winning pitcher David Price, another Rays' September call-up.

"That's been this team all season," Upton said.

There was Pena, standing in the Rays dugout as Upton's fly ball descended, screaming at Perez, though he knew Perez couldn't hear him.

"Do it! Do it!"

There had been so many heroes, from Pena to Evan Longoria to Carl Crawford to Cliff Floyd to Upton to Price. Longoria had his own idea, short and sweet. "Dan Wheeler," he said. Dan Wheeler, who spent everything he had in three-plus innings of relief. In the end, everyone needed relief.

Do it. Do it.

Fernando Perez took off.

A season took flight again.

Now come three games at Fenway Park, where last month the Rays finally broke through, with everyone they had, with everything they had, beginning with Dan Johnson's improbable ninth-inning, game-tying homer that jump-started a new kind of Ray way at Fenway.

You might forget, but Perez scored the winning run that same inning after rapping a double off the Green Monster. Pena beat Boston the next night with a three-run homer in the 14th. That was a late game, too. Now it's very late - October, in fact.

Their hearts are still taking it.

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