Rays Prepare For First-Ever Series

By Brady Rynyk
Love of Sports Correspondent

There’s a saying in baseball that momentum is only as strong as tomorrow’s starting pitcher.

Although Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester had a perfect game going through the first three innings in Game 7 of the ALDS, it was Rays hurler Matt Garza who went to another level to lead his team to an AL pennant.

With nine strikeouts, Garza cruised through seven, closing out every inning with a K, including a strike ‘em out throw ‘em out in the sixth. Tropicana Field exploded with a roaring echo of cow bells and cheers after that key play – only to fall on the deaf ears of Garza, who’d elected to use earplugs to heighten his focus and elevate his intensity.

The team’s momentum with carry through into the seventh inning, when Lester allowed Tampa’s first three batters on base with consecutive hits.

Even after loading the bases in the eighth inning, the Sox couldn’t muster a single run against Joe Madden’s rotation of relief pitchers. When push came to shove, and the Rays looked like they were on the verge of heartbreaking defeat, the club’s skipper looked to an unlikely source to close things out.

Twenty-three-year-old rookie left-hander David Price became the fifth and final pitcher of the inning as he took to the mound with the bases juiced. Yet again, Madden’s managerial madness paid off as any jitters of pitching in a high pressure situation seemed to be nonexistent as Price glared down J.D. Drew with a stone-face and struck him out to end the inning on four pitches. Price would return to the mound in the ninth and make short work of the Red Sox to send Tampa Bay to its first World Series in franchise history.

After a year surrounded by scepticism and doubt around the league about the Rays “lucky” regular season, one thing is definitely for certain: this season is no fluke. Tampa Bay continually battled through adversity, only to repeatedly come out on top.

Time after time, the Rays’ resilience has surfaced from every player in the lineup. With both Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton each on the verge of breaking the MLB record for the most individual home runs in a postseason (not to mention both being the youngest players in MLB history to do so), the team’s roster shows no real kinks in its armor. The balanced lineup of both lefty and righty power hitters will be sure to give any opposing pitching rotation a strategic nightmare – something the Phillies will surly have a hard time wrapping their heads around.

Tampa seems to always get a steady stream of production from seemingly unlikely heroes like Rocco Baldelli, who drove in the winning running in the fifth, or Willy Aybar, who homered in the seventh to help cushion the lead.

With a great starting rotation (Scott Kazmir, Jame Shields, Garza), a deep bullpen, a series of diverse weapons throughout the roster and veteran All-Star leadership from the likes of Carl Crawford, it should be no surprise that this team’s in the World Series.

Of course, you may recall they’d lost close to 1,000 games in its first 10 years in the league, and that this 11th year was the first time the franchise had ever broken the .500 marker.

It all became a distant memory when the club chalked up over 100 wins this season (including playoffs) and had enough poise and character to come out on top in the toughest division in all of the bigs.

With Game 1 of the World Series upon us, the team may once have been the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, but it’s become quite apparent the Rays are certainly getting the last laugh now!

This is officially your last chance to jump on the Bandwagon!