Rays rally for improbable victory in Texas

For the first seven innings Sunday afternoon, the Rays were simply atrocious.

Playing as if there was nothing in the world they wanted more than to get on the plane back home and sweep their final road game of the season under the rug, they trailed by five heading to the eighth inning and appeared minutes away from being swept at Rangers Ballpark for the second time this season.

But after an error by Texas third baseman Chris Davis with two outs and the bases empty in the eighth opened the door, the Rays snapped out of their stupor. They made it a game with three runs in that frame, then scored four times in the ninth and held on for an unlikely 7-6 victory.

"It was everything in reverse that's happened to us for the past month," Manager Joe Maddon said. "We finally got back at somebody."

In the process, they salvaged a bit of collective pride on what was shaping up to be a very ugly day at the ballpark. It was all smiles afterward as Ben Zobrist's second two-run single in as many innings tied the game in the ninth and a flawless squeeze bunt from Fernando Perez provided the winning margin.

Five of the Rays' first six batters in the ninth reached base on Rangers closer Frank Francisco, who had been summoned to finish off the eighth with a strikeout of Gregg Zaun. Zobrist was at the tail end of that sequence of three singles and two walks, threading a ball through the right side to bring home Jason Bartlett and Carl Crawford and make it a 6-6 game.

Zobrist said all he was trying to do was salvage a day that had been a mess up until nearly the very end. He had been 0-for-3 before singling to drive in a pair of runs in the eighth, and managed to do it again in the ninth.

"The pitch I hit, I didn't hit it well, but I just rolled it through in that perfect spot in the hole over there," he said. "At that point, when you've got Fernando coming up and Joe puts the safety squeeze on, you know we have a good chance of going ahead right there because Fernando's a very good bunter. It was real quick, the way the momentum swung."

Perez wasn't at all surprised to be asked to bunt against new pitcher Neftali Feliz with one out and Zobrist on first and Evan Longoria on third. Feliz threw him the perfect pitch, a fastball middle-in, and he slashed it down the first-base line to score Longoria without a play.

"That was a perfect situation," Perez said. "Joe Maddon baseball - it works every time. It's brilliant."

Grant Balfour and Lance Cormier then finished the job in the bottom of the ninth and the Rays had completed their road slate with a 32-49 record. Sunday's win was only Tampa Bay's third in its final 14 games away from Tropicana Field.

Maddon lauded his players' effort, considering the circumstances facing them as the late innings approached. The temperature reached 95 degrees by midafternoon under a cloudless sky, and the Rays had spent the first two-thirds of the game doing their best to get it over with.

They ran into outs on the bases, were victimized by a squeeze bunt themselves and barely made an effort to test Texas starter Brandon McCarthy, who was stretched to a three-ball count by only three of the 29 batters he faced.

In the end, though, the Rays finally deviated from their usual script and came up with that last-minute twist they have witnessed from the opposite dugout too many times.

"When Zobrist was up, I remember Joe said, 'Why not us, one time?'" Perez said. "I think what he was talking about is just the fact that lately it's been us in that situation, winning by a couple and having somebody take it away.

"Of course we can't make it to the postseason, but the games are still important. You don't go out there to lose and to give it up."