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Fennelly: This Could Be Greatest Week In Rays' History

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2008

Updated: 09/15/2008 12:25 am

If you like baseball, or ever liked baseball, or once dated someone who knew someone who once liked baseball, this is your week - seven last chances to see what you'll never see again. There's only one first time in a pennant race. Just one.

The homestand the Rays have waited on for all their existence is here.

It begins tonight at the Elysian Catwalks. The Red Sox are here, and here's the chance to burn the World Series champions to a Coco crisp.

Only the champs are closing.

The AL East lead is one game. Just one.

These Rays aren't just trying to hold off the Sox, or the Twins in the four-game Trop series that follows, or the White Sox. They're chasing immortality. Then again, there's mortality.

The lead is one. Just one.

The Rays are chasing miracle makers. They're chasing the '91 Braves, '67 Red Sox and the '69 Mets.

And the Red Sox are chasing the Rays.

It won't ever get better.

The Yankees Were Spoilers

The only thing more amazing than the Rays is that there are still seats available for these games with Boston. We knew they should have scheduled the Little River Band postgame concert.

Enough with the embarrassment.

On with the pennant race.

The Rays broke through at Fenway Park last week, when, as legend will tell it, Dan Johnson ran from Concourse B at Logan Airport, hopped in a cab, arrived in the ninth and, with airline peanuts in one hand and a bat in another, slew the hated Papel Beast to save the Rays from second place with one mighty swing.

Then again, late Saturday the Rays seemed a handful of outs away from a four-game lead in the East when grand-slam king Ben Zobrist threw that double-play ball into right field at Yankee Stadium. In Boston, the Sox rallied to win. The lead was back to two games. Then came Sunday.

Rays lose. Sox win.

Now it's one. Just one.

It's also official: The Yankees are spoilers.

But this is how it should be - the Rays and Red Sox eyeball to eyeball, waiting for the other guy to blink. This is how it should be, Kazmir against Dice-K tonight. This is how it should be, with Evan Longoria back, with David Price finally here.

It won't ever get better.

Tonight Can Be The Start

This could be the greatest week in Rays history. Not that there were any greatest weeks in previous Rays history, but you get the idea. There has never been a homestand like this.

The Rays have swept Boston twice at the Trop this season, but that doesn't matter any more than those earlier Sox sweeps at Fenway did come last week.

OK, it seems an uneven match for September. After all, the Red Sox have tradition and salary. And there's the city of Boston itself, with all that history. Oh, if only Paul Revere had ridden a golf cart through Sun City Center shouting "The British are retiring!"

The Rays can make their own history this week.

They can start tonight.

The Red Sox have played 9,871 of these kind of series, dating back to when Cy Young was hardly old - the kind of series that makes fever in the streets. The Rays got a taste of it at Fenway. Now it's in their breadbasket. The lead is one. Just one.

What a week it could be at the Trop.

Uh, bring a friend.

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