RAYS 3, JAYS 2: Travis Lee homers with two out and two strikes in the ninth for the club's first-ever win of its kind.
By MARC TOPKIN, Times Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2005
[AP photo]
Danys Baez congratulates Travis Lee, whose homer with two out in the ninth had given the Rays the lead.
TORONTO - The Devil Rays were headed for another cruel ending.
Seth McClung had pitched his heavy heart out, but all he was going to have to show for it Saturday was a complete-game loss. Travis Lee was so sure he was going to strike out to end the game he was already planning to ask how bad he looked. Another game they led was about to be lost, and a sixth straight defeat was ready to be hung on them.
But with two outs in the ninth inning, and with two strikes and little hope, Lee - somehow - knocked Miguel Batista's cut fastball over the rightfield fence for a two-run homer, giving the Devil Rays an improbable but important 3-2 win.
"It's pure shock. I think everyone is still shocked," Lee said. "I can't even remember what happened. I can't tell you where the pitch was or anything. I just know it was cutting in and it vibrated when I hit it so I knew it was cutting in there hard."
After blowing leads and losing four nights in a row, the Rays needed to do something different. Who knew it would be so dramatic?
It was the first time in their history they won with a two-out, 0-and-2 homer in their last at-bat, and only the third game of 77 this season where they've won when trailing after eight innings.
"That's a thrilling win, that's what that was," manager Lou Piniella said. "We needed that. We'd lost some close, tough ballgames on this road trip."
McClung, making his first start since attending his grandmother's funeral, came out crisp and focused, retiring the first 13 and taking a no-hitter, and a 1-0 lead, into the sixth.
But things changed suddenly. He walked the first batter, Gabe Gross. He lost the no-hitter and the lead when Orlando Hudson ripped a triple to right-center. And he seemingly lost the chance to win when Russ Adams' infield squibber scored Hudson to put the Jays up 2-1.
McClung wasn't thinking about the no-hitter until he heard some fans in the sparse Rogers Centre crowd - an announced 18,841 - taunting him about it.
"It was one of those days like you have at the Trop sometimes where you hear everything out there," McClung said. "I thought about it, but it wasn't anything big.
"I kept telling myself the reason I'm throwing this no-hitter is because I'm executing my pitches. And when I wasn't executing my pitches is when I wasn't throwing a no-hitter anymore."
With Josh Towers setting the Rays down almost as quickly, the game got late fast. When McClung completed the eighth, it looked as if he would have the Rays' first complete game, ending their record season-starting streak at 136 games.
But Jorge Cantu opened the ninth with a single through shortstop. Aubrey Huff's groundout off reliever Scott Schoenweis advanced pinch-runner Nick Green to second, but Batista retired Jonny Gomes on a fly to center.
Batista's first two pitches to Lee cut so sharply he not only swung through them but he wasn't even close.
"I'm down 0-2 and my first two swings it looked like I was taking good cuts but I had no shot of hitting those balls," Lee said. "I think if I would have hit it, it would have hit my hands they were cutting in so hard."
He didn't expect to do any better on the next one.
"I thought I had no shot," Lee said. "I thought I was done. I was just thinking that after I strikeout I was going to ask Greenie, who was on second, how far those things were moving. They were nasty pitches."
The Rays know all about losing games that it looks like they were going to win. So maybe, as Piniella said, it evens things out for them to win one that it appeared they were going to lose.
"Coming back after losing five in a row, they were all close games, and we're on our way to losing another," Lee said. "It just shows it's never too late for our team. "It's just never-say-die with the D-Rays, you know?"
