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Two More Rays Wins And Corks Will Fly

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 18, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - The question, the only one left it sometimes seems, is just which catwalk the World Series-winning homer will hit.

There have been nights filled with wonder at Tropicana Field this season. Wednesday was another.

The Red Sox have left.

The lead was no games.

Now it's two games.

Now it's 90 wins.

Your mind wanders at such moments, as some of them improbables, Willy Aybar, Gabe Gross and Fernando Perez, circle the bases, as the World Series champions, not the Rays, fall apart in a sold-out Trop. Oh, there's this, too:

The Rays might be two days from champagne.

For consecutive nights, after the back-alley beating the Sox handed Scott Kazmir, the Rays beat back with a walk-off and a walk-over. Not even the knuckles of Tim Wakefield, an all-time Rays killer, could halt the Murderer's Row that is Aybar, Gross and Perez, who each homered before the night was two innings old. It was enough for a 10-3 win and more than enough to make you think God is up there ringing a cowbell.

Even Big In Hazelton

They beat the World Series champions four out of six times across 10 days.

We ain't seen nothing yet.

The Rays can clinch a wild-card spot as early as Friday against the Twins at the Trop.

It's that close, that inevitable.

It will be so big they might even have to pre-empt the high school football game on local radio in Hazelton, Pa., Rays manager Joe Maddon's hometown.

Uh, no.

"If we bumped them, Joey would be no good anymore," Maddon said.

It seemed as if half of Hazelton was here for this series - there was Maddon's mom, the unsinkable Beanie, and one of his brothers, and a niece, and cousins, and ... the Maddons come at you in waves.

So does Joey's baseball team.

"This team has been like that," Rays first baseman Carlos Pena said. "Guys have come from everywhere. You put together all these little parts and you build a pyramid, stone by stone."

Rays starting pitcher Matt Garza gave his all on three days rest and was in line for the win until he put two Sox on in the bottom of the fifth, allowing David Ortiz to dig in with a chance at three homers in the game off the right-hander. Ortiz's second homer was still stuck in the Trop's D-ring.

Out came Maddon. Beanie's boy wasn't messing around. Out went Garza.

In from the bullpen stalked the ornery Grant Balfour, who to this day can't believe he wasn't a Ray out of training camp - and has pitched like it ever since. Ortiz lifted a 94-mph Balfour fastball to Perez in center for the inning's final out. The relievers that followed, J.P. Howell and Chad Bradford, didn't let up, either. Can a bullpen be named team MVP? That's probably never happened. There's a lot of nevers going around.

Who Are These Guys?

The Rays Experience is a mind-bender. Take Wednesday's home run heroes.

Aybar once actually disappeared on the Atlanta Braves. They had no idea where he was. He missed all of 2007 for medical and off-field reasons, including real live drug rehab. Wednesday, Aybar's two-run shot in the first answered Ortiz' two-run homer in the top of the inning.

"We've believed in this guy," Maddon said.

Then there's Gross, who hit his 13th homer of the season in the second. He was picked up from Milwaukee for a thruway pitcher in April and he comes to the plate as a his chosen Christian song wafts through the Trop. The man has three walk-off RBIs this season. If there is champagne, "I won't pour any down my throat, but I'll be happy to let the guys dump it on my head," Gross said.

And there's Perez, who followed Gross with his own homer. He is filling in and then some for the injured B.J. Upton. He made a great catch in center to go with his homer. He hasn't been in the majors for three weeks, but at Columbia University he majored in, among other things, creative writing. It couldn't have been any more creative than this story. Perez was in the minors all season, hoping to get a chance to be part of this.

"It's the best story in baseball," he said.

So Joey's guys, all of them, keep on writing.

Two wins against the Twins is all it will take.

Two wins and corks, not pigs, will fly.

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