Rays/MLB

Another dose of heartbreak

By MARC TOPKIN
Published May 31, 2006

[AP photo]

Baltimore's Corey Patterson leaps to catch pinch-hitter Greg Norton's drive for the final out of the game.

BALTIMORE - Sunday seemed cruel enough, when the Devil Rays' rally from a five-run deficit ended when the tying run was thrown out at the plate on the game's final play.

Then Tuesday, it got worse.

The Rays came back again, only to come up short again - head-shaking, dirt-kicking, resolve-testing short - as Baltimore's Corey Patterson jumped and reached over the left-centerfield wall to rob Greg Norton of what would have been a tying two-run home run on what again was the game's final play.

Instead of celebrating, or at least continuing, the Rays were stunned and silent, as much by the 7-5 loss that extended their losing streak to a season-high five games as the circumstance.

"Must not be living right," Norton said.

Certainly not as right as Patterson, anyway, who before saving the game helped the Orioles win it by hitting two homers, stealing a base and reaching on an error.

"They should name both a street and a day for him," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "For his total contribution to the greater Baltimore area. His game today should go down in infamy. Quite a performance."

Down 5-1 after an unimpressive five-inning start by Doug Waechter, who had trouble keeping the ball down, the Rays showed some signs of a reinvigorated offense, even more impressive given the draining 95-degree game-time temperature.

Aubrey Huff, the frustration of his brutally slow start bubbling over Saturday with an ejection and dugout tirade, had his first three-hit game of the season and his second home run. Jonny Gomes, 2-for-21 on the first seven games of the road trip, had two hits. Ty Wigginton hit his 12th homer, tying Gomes with a team-high 39 RBIs. Damon Hollins reached base three times.

Despite relievers Travis Harper and Chad Orvella each giving up homers to make their comeback more difficult, the Rays scored in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings and were poised to do so again in the ninth.

Hollins drew a two-out walk from Orioles closer Chris Ray, the Tampa native, to bring up Norton, who has an impressive 10 career pinch-hit homers, the past four either tying the score or putting his team ahead.

He drove Ray's 1-and-1 pitch to left-center, hitting it well enough that Maddon thought it was gone just from the sound ("It had that real click to it," he said) and Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo admitting to having "a terrible feeling."

But Norton wasn't sure and, more important, neither was Patterson, who calmly tracked the ball and timed his leap perfectly, his glove maybe 12-18 inches above the top of the wall when he snared the ball and stole the Rays' hopes.

"Luckily, I was able to jump over the wall," Patterson said. "He hit it not quite far enough. I can run a little bit, but I don't have that great hops."

Norton slapped his hands on his helmet and walked off the field looking back at the scene of the crime. The rest of the Rays lingered in the dugout staring toward the field and undoubtedly thinking of what might have been.

"I didn't think it was the end of the game," Gomes said.

Maddon found some positives in the way the Rays came back from the early deficit, much like they did Sunday in Boston. But as hollow as they felt after Joey Gathright was thrown out at home then, they felt more empty Tuesday.

"We have the play at the plate, and now we've got a guy going over the wall," Maddon said. "I guess that's falling short in a sense, but it's almost like it's a push, and you lose the push somehow."

Norton said the Rays have no choice but to make the best of it.

"It's a tough one," he said. "But I'm being positive, saying we've had a little rough streak, and that happened, and maybe things will start turning around and going our way here soon. I hope."

[Last modified May 31, 2006, 01:58:10]