Oh, suck. Didn't realize that about the Pads. :(

Hopefully he can end up on a less offensive team than is possible. Over at MLB trade rumors, all the Yankees/Mets/Red Sox/Cubs fans are putting up stupid trades, claiming it's their god-given right to get him. *sigh*

SI

Yup

SI

Has the TB bullpen's contract with the devil run out this week or something? :D

Hell of a situation for Price to come in here.

If ever there was a bastard I wanted out...

SI

Wow. That stadium just exploded

SI

Filth monster.

Seriously. Dickie V heart attack alert?

At least JD Drew came through in the All Star game to give the AL homefield advantage in the World Series

(partisan rant)

WTF!!! That was a FOOT OFF THE PLATE?

I think Foz may have a point here - JD Drew's eye is almost certainly better than Angel Hernandez'

Yeah, but he went around

SI

Hernandez knew JD Drew's deal with the Devil ended the other night so he said "what's the point?"

Wait, called a swinging strike. Makes more sense.

I think the TB hitters want this over as well, the way they're swinging. :D

The way they called it made it look like it was a called strike 3, which was why my head exploded :)

Oh well.

Here we go...

SI

Oh, sure. Bring up the Francisco Cabrera game. That was one of my favorite games ever

SI

Also, while wikipedia'ing that one to make sure that was the right year, I saw this:

"As of 2008, the Braves are the last team in Major League Baseball to win a seventh game after blowing a 3-1 lead."

SI

WOO!

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Congratulations to the Tampa fans and the team.

what a season for Tampa

so awesome. congrats to Tampa.

And they just injured 3 pitchers in that dogpile... ;)

SI

They need to card some of them in the clubhouse when the champagine comes out.

That was one of the best games I've seen...Just tense throughout....I could only imagine watching it as a fan of either team.

YEah - a hell of a game.

A good game, sure. Very tense. I just wish there had been a comeback (preferably by the Rays) or something to make it a great game. Again, I reference the Braves/Pirates from a few posts ago.

Not many plays that are signature or will be remembered in a few years. Just a very good game throughout.

SI

Congrats to the Rays, that was fun to watch. I love Cinderella teams. It's amazing how young and good that team is.

I dunno - Price coming in from the bullpen was pretty much my takeaway here.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Awesome.

YES!!!!!

Rays going to the World Series!!! Price showed some amazing coolness getting Bay out and then closing the 9th.

That was certainly one of the biggest piles I've ever seen. Players can die under something like that.

I'd be pretty fired up about Tampa if they were playing anyone but Boston. Great story, great for baseball.

I actualy found an old Rays visor in my closet that Saldana got me from a visit to Tampa. I will be wearing it for sure this week.

Congrats to the Rays and their fans. They deserve it. Good luck in the World Series.

Dammit, still a couple more games to listen to those assinine cow bells.

You ain't bullshittin' :

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Cu...tent?oid=53524

The baseball franchise in Tampa Bay is going to the World Series. Unbelievable! Congrats to the Rays!

Now go win a title and truly piss people off.:D

Alright, Rays. Bring it on.

Like someone else said, if they weren't playing the Sox, I'd have been rooting hard for the Rays (and now I am). Good luck to the better team...they proved it.

A couple of abstract thoughts.

1) This makes me think of Back to the Future 2 when the Cubs beat the Miami Gators in the World Series.

2) I know it's too early to think about this but just throwing it out there. Is this a one-time thing for the Rays?

Remember last year, all anyone could talk about is how much young talent was on the Rockies and how they would definitely be back and be a power for a long time? How's that working out again?

Now, I'll grant that the Rays have superior pitching to the Rockies as Kazmir and Shields have been doing this for a couple of years now. But Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook were also both pretty well regarded young pitchers. A lot of the Rays success is built on a quality bullpen, only we all know that is fleeting from one year to another.

And then there's the competition. The Red Sox are the best run organization in baseball. Oh, and having a ton of resources ($133M) makes it easy to cover up Julio Lugo sized missteps. And if $200M isn't enough, the Yankees could probably push that to stupid levels of $300M or more if they wanted to in their new park next year. The Blue Jays are a well run team which could have won the NL West this year but they don't have the resources or, at this point, hitting to win the AL East. And the Orioles could spend if they wanted to, but, again are in the quandry of a tough division and aren't on the same level as the Red Sox and no one is near the Yankees.

So where does Tampa fit moving forward?

SI

I am glad I wasn't the only geek who thought this.

Actually, when I saw quite a few predictions of a Cubs/Rays World Series at the start of the playoffs- it's what my mind immediately snapped to :D

SI

On the other hand, the Rockies needed a historic final month in order to make it to the postseason, while the Rays were consistently great all season long. The Rockies also played in a far easier divison.

As for talent, I think one of the differences may be that the Rays are also stacked in the minors. Price, for one, seems like he's ready to step in and make a difference. The team is young, true, but pitchers like Kazmir have a great deal of experience.

They may not win the AL East next year, but I think they'll have a winning season and be a force for a while.

And I do think the Rockies will return to winning seasons. They did suffer through a bunch of injuries this year.

The Devil Rays are the Expos of this generation. The only difference is the Expos had the misfortune of a strike right at the peak when their time had come. Following that, the overall disinterest in baseball by fans forced their hands to move their players and get something back for them before it was too late.

The Devil Rays are in the same situation now where the collection of really good talent is here and should be able to outperform other teams for the next year or two. Once the cheap younger players get to arbitration or free agency, the devil Rays will no longer be able to afford them due to a small fan base and those players will be traded off to other teams for a new wave of prospects.

And we don't really know how much the owner is willing to pay. If they get the new stadium they want, they may have a good deal of money to keep a lot of the team together.

As someone who had a seat at the Rockies run to the Series, they just played INSANE baseball last year at the end to get to the playoffs. That was a fluke, but what they did was really just a combination of "Getting hot" at the right time, sorta like a team riding a hot goalie to the Stanley Cup Finals. No less important, just not really indicative of how good they were as a team.

Tampa Bay is built well, well managed and that organization clearly has a game plan they're executing on. I think this surpassed their expectations, but it was the right show of "take your move when you can make it." The fact that they were smart enough NOT to go make a big deal during the trade deadline to get some "Veteran talent" or someone to "help" was brilliant in retrospect. They have chemistry and rather than destroy it or throw a Molotov cocktail into it, they just kept what they had and rode it out.

I think they're here to stay and the AL East is a 3-team horse race and 4 if the Jays can get their heads out of their asses. After coming back this year with Cito and with the fire under JP to get to the playoffs in the next two years or be fired for sure (And probably never to get a GM gig again, given how terrible he was in Toronto...) I think that I'm rooting for the Rays because exposes the fraudulence of the Jays missteps for the past decade, which is "OMGZ we can't compete with the Red Sox/Yankees juggernauts."

Well Tampa did. End of story.

Go Rays.

I don't think the Rays the the Expos at all. Montreal is in a non-traditional baseball market, they had the foreign language barrier which made it worse than Anglophone Canada and to boot they had a bad stadium and once their strong ownership left, the situation got worse.

MLB screwed that team, there are no two ways about it. The money MLB loaned Jeffrey Loria to buy the Marlins could've been loaned to the Expos to help them finance their new stadium or they could've arranged bridge financing in some other manner. Or let them sell earlier.

That said, the owner is a New York guy with deep pockets. They've already increased their value a ton. If they could weather the storm of being a bad expansion team for over a decade, they're not gonna start packing up the team now and being bad. The Sternberg ownership group knows how to run a business if nothing else.

I still say this team eventually ends up somewhere else in less than a decade (the Brooklyn joke remains intact, because nothing about baseball would surprise anymore...but I realize the barriers to that) and it'll be because they won't get a new ballpark, but...that said, I'm glad to see them turn it around.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Rays are a great story, and I am really glad that they are getting to the world series. On the other hand though, I also am sad because it is just the ammo that people need to argue why there doesn't need to be any kind of Salary cap or such in baseball.. "If the Rays can win it, anyone can!!".

You mention the Expos stadium being horrible, the same is true in Tampa, that stadium is a dump. While Montreal had a language barrier, Tampa has an age barrier.. a large number of people in the area end up moving from other locations and their team loyalties remain from their childhood (childhood Yankees or Red Sox fans have always outnumbered Tampa in their own stadium).

I wouldn't be suprised to see them be able to keep it together for a few years, but in the end if the players remain this good to be able to keep a top talent team out there, they'll eventually want to be paid as such and the Rays won't be able to afford it.