My Top 5 Favorite Rays Games
With the super bowl ending, we now come upon the worst time in sports all year. The period between football ending and baseball starting. To fill the gap, im posting my top 5 favorite rays games off all time. I will be one per day, over the next 5 days.
Extra Inning Maddness:
Tampa Bay Rays Vs Boston Red Sox
August 4th, 2009
After getting off to a bad start over the first month of the 2009 season, the Tampa Bay Rays struggled to catch up the rest off the year. The Boston Red Sox, solid as always, led the AL Wild Card Race by 5.5 games coming into a series at their personal house of horrors, Tropicana Field. With the red sox determined to avenge last years ALCS defeat, and a chance to firmly bury the rival rays, the sox smartly adjusted their rotation so that their top guns, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, would face the rays in this short two games series.
Facing the red sox would be their personal tormenter, Matt Garza. With a packed house at Tropicana Field (myself included), the rays began their make or break series with the red sox.
The game fast became a pitchers duel, with lester and garza both pitching very well. Lester outperformed garza, and the red sox took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the 8th with young fireballer Daniel Bard entering the game to record 3 outs to get the game over to superstar closer Jonathon Papelbon.
Rays 3rd baseman Evan Longoria, also a red sox killer, was in an extended slump all summer because of a nagging hamstring pull. Leading off the 8th inning, Longoria worked the count to 2-2 after fouling off some nasty pitches. Longoria then crused a 99 MPH fastball from bard over the centerfield wall to tie the game at 2 and send the rays crowd into a frenzy.
The game went into extra innings, where the bullpens dominated. The red sox loaded the bases with nobody out in the top of the 10th inning, but could not score. The rays did likewise in the 11th and 12th innings, but couldnt score either. Finally in bottom of the 13th, with a runner on 3rd and 2 outs, Evan Longoria hit his 2nd home run of the night, giving the rays their most important win of the season so far.
The rays went on to win the next night as well to get to with 3.5 of the Wild Card. The rays did not catch the sox, who went on to win the WC. But still this ranks as my 5th favorite rays game of all time.
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