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Dream was sweet for a momentBy GARY SHELTON © St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 1998 It was in the bottom of the ninth, the miracle inning, and Fred McGriff was walking toward the plate. Already, three runs had scored in the inning, and three men were on base, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had somehow closed to within a grand-slam-and-a-half of the Detroit Tigers. There was an instant, just an instant, when you forgot everything you had seen to that point. When you pictured McGriff turning on a fastball, the way he has so many times, and of it disappearing into the bleachers as the fans celebrated. When you started to think about comebacks, when you quickly did the math to think about who would have to do what. When you thought that if Kelly got on and Paul Sorrento went yard and John Flaherty singled and ... . This was baseball, and there was a second, just a second, when you could still dream it all might happen. That one moment, the essence of baseball, was as good as it would get for the Rays. This was a day for dreams, and this was a day for reality. Most of the time, reality wins. Most of the time, McGriff flies to left. Most of the time, a team ahead by nine runs going into the ninth wins. This time, reality baby-sealed the Rays, 11-6. One game in, and this is where we are, separating the stuff of dreams from the sobering reality of getting stuffed. So you wonder: What is this team's reality? What sort of clues were in this first impression? Is this the team that was out of this game almost before it began? Or is this the team that allowed you to let go of your imagination in the ninth? Or both? A warning: There is danger in attempting to evaluate a baseball team over one game, especially one still under warranty. This is not an NFL game that counts one-sixteenth of a season, where deficiencies in speed and strength can be obvious. This is a team that will play 161 more games. "I didn't think we'd go 162-0," said third baseman Wade Boggs. "Realistically, I thought we'd be about 160-2, but I didn't think we'd win them all." That said, it has been a 22-year wait, and fans have been known to rush to judgment, and Wilson Alvarez did give up almost a run (five) for every out (seven) he recorded. The Tigers may not have hit Alvarez hard, but they did hit him often, bleeding him with small cuts until he could not last the third. Not to say the Rays were beaten up pretty quickly, but that was Roberto Duran on the mound for Detroit. At one point, the Tigers had 15 hits and 13 outs. It was 11-0 by the fifth, and you kept waiting for the teams to stop and re-choose the sides. Who were you expecting? The '27 Yankees? "That was the disappointing part," shortstop Kevin Stocker said. "We got so far down so quickly." Yes, they did, and yes, it was ugly to see, especially when you consider that it was a grand opening. But consider this: The Rays have the same record as the Dodgers and the Cubs and the Orioles. The Cubs gave up 11 and the Reds gave up 10 and the Rangers gave up nine. At its most basic, baseball is a game of hope. Despite Alvarez's results, despite being out of the game so early, the Rays bought themselves some hope with the four-run ninth. Instead of being disappointing, they left the field determined. Instead of looking scraggly, they were scrappy. This is what they would like for you to take away from this game. That they fought the good fight. "I think we showed our personality in the ninth," catcher John Flaherty said. "We're going to battle teams for nine innings, no matter who is on the mound. Hopefully, that's all the fans will ask, because that's all we can do. To battle as hard as we can all the time." Oh, no one is fooling themselves. There are going to be other days like this, when good pitches find holes, when the other team jumps to an insurmountable lead and the new team can do nothing but hold on and talk about tomorrow. And to take solace that the scoreboard has been erased, and the field will be lined again, and everyone gets to dream all over again. If you want to draw a conclusion from the first game, that's as good as any.
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T. PETERSBURG -- There was a moment, just a moment, when they made you try to believe. When they made you push aside the obvious, when they made you think they could do things impossible.
