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This one doesn't get away

Rays end 11-game skid against Red Sox, blowing 6-0 lead before bouncing back for 9-7 victory.

By MARC TOPKIN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 28, 2001

BOSTON -- Having seen a six-run lead wither away on a sweltering night at Fenway Park, the Rays were about to experience deja vu all over again.

They'd lost 11 straight to the Red Sox, and they had blown four-run leads the previous two nights. And when Boston tied Wednesday's score in the seventh, thoughts of "Here we go again" began creeping into the minds of nearly everyone in a Tampa Bay uniform.

But this night was different from the others. This time the Rays came back, and they held on, and they won 9-7, ending one of the most frustrating streaks of futility in their futile history.

"Once the score's tied 6-6, it's obvious the thoughts of 'Here we go again' are going to be present," Rays manager Hal McRae said. "But at 6-6 it's not over. You can't avoid feeling it, but you have to realize we have to continue to play and that we still can win the ballgame."

If nothing else, the Rays have plenty of experience getting to that point.

Monday they had a 4-0 lead after 11/2 innings and lost 12-8. Tuesday they had a 5-1 lead in the fifth, and a 6-5 edge in the eighth, and lost 7-6.

Wednesday they had a 6-0 lead in the fourth, mainly because of home runs by Greg Vaughn, who went deep for the third straight game and tied the team record with 27 June RBI, and Steve Cox. And it appeared Albie Lopez was going to end his tortuous nine-game personal losing streak after battling through five innings and surviving another direct hit from a batted ball.

But the Sox slowly edged back into the game, then tied it in the seventh with help from third baseman Aubrey Huff, who muffed a Manny Ramirez pop-up that was so high it looked like a snowflake. "You could hit that ball to me 100 times, and I still wouldn't catch it," Huff said. "If we were playing at the Trop, that ball would have gone through our roof."

But on this night, anyway, even that didn't deter the Rays.

"We hung in there, and we didn't give in," said Huff, who atoned for an error with two clutch hits. "We could have folded. It would have been very easy to fold."

The Rays went right back into the lead. Ben Grieve, who struck out in his first three at-bats against Hideo Nomo, doubled to left off lefty Pete Schourek to open the eighth, and Huff made some amends by singling him to third.

After John Flaherty's too-shallow fly ball, rookie Brent Abernathy took matters into his hands by hitting a line drive up the middle that Boston reliever Rod Beck tried to catch with his bare hand. Instead, Beck deflected it enough that none of his teammates could make a play on it, either, allowing Grieve to score the go-ahead run.

"I thought he was catching it; I really did," Abernathy said. "He had his hand right on line with it. It would have been one of the most amazing catches I'd ever seen."

Showing they learned something from the past few nights, the Rays tacked on some insurance when Huff singled home two runs in the ninth, and those runs came in handy when Doug Creek, who went 22/3 innings for the win because the bullpen was short-handed, gave up a run in the ninth and allowed the tying run to the plate.

"You get in a big game and we've finally got a chance to beat these guys, and we've had chances before, and you don't want to let another one slip through your fingers," Creek said. "You don't feel extra pressure, but you really get pumped up. And I was a little too strong.

"But the bottom line is winning, and that's what we did."

Lopez needed 99 pitches to get through five innings, but he went into the clubhouse with a good chance for his first win since April 24. He lost that shot when Paul Wilson gave up the tying runs, but Lopez said he wasn't the least upset.

"We won, and that's the bottom line for me," Lopez said.

Really, that was the bottom line for everybody. The 11 straight losses matched the Rays' worst streak against any team (they lost 11 to the Yankees during the 1998-99 seasons), though it wasn't yet halfway to the big-league record of 23.

"It's nice to not make excuses and to take some positives from the game and all the normal routine I've followed since I've been managing," McRae said. "It's nice to say we won. The positive from this game is that we won."

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