ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For much of the night, the outcome of the American League wild-card race seemed as if it would be decidedly different. The Yankees were battering the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Boston Red Sox were beating the Baltimore Orioles.
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The Rays reacting to Dan Johnson’s solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. It was Johnson’s second homer of the season. More Photos »
But a combination of a rain delay in one city and extra innings in another provided for one of the most exciting and memorable simultaneous endings to a playoff race that baseball has seen in years — all of it happening just minutes apart in two different towns.
“Within eight minutes the world changed,” said Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who was one of several Yankees players monitoring both games in the clubhouse. “That’s what makes baseball the greatest game.”
As the clock approached midnight, the Orioles came back to tie the Red Sox with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and when the score was relayed to the fans at Tropicana Field, their cheers let the Rays know what was happening up north.
A few minutes later, the Orioles won their game on a walk-off single by Robert Andino, and as the cheers went up again, Rays second baseman Ben Zobrist turned to his teammates in the dugout and said: “This is our game now. We have to win this now.”
At 12:05 a.m. Thursday morning, they did. Evan Longoria, the Rays’ most talented player and the face of the franchise, ripped a 2-2 pitch from Scott Proctor over the low part of the left-field fence and the Rays completed two improbable comebacks, beating the Yankees, 8-7, in 12 innings to win the American League wild card.
After trailing the Red Sox by nine games on Sept. 4, the Rays overcame the largest September deficit in major league history to make the playoffs, unleashing a wild celebration in the process.
“I don’t think there’s any specific explanation for it,” said Longoria, who also hit a three-run home run as part of a wild comeback in the eighth inning. “It’s just a bunch of guys who put together an incredible season.”
As winners of the wild card, the Rays will play the Texas Rangers in one American League division series, while the Yankees will host the Detroit Tigers in the other. Both series start Friday night, with the Yankees’ first pitch set to be thrown by C. C. Sabathia at 8:37 p.m. He will be facing Detroit’s ace, Justin Verlander.
The Yankees did not know who their opponent was until the Rangers beat the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim late Wednesday night, but that was minor drama compared with what took place with the Rays and the Red Sox.
The Rays never gave up, entering the final game of the regular season Wednesday tied with Boston in the standings at 90-71.
Similarly, they went into the eighth inning of their game Wednesday against the Yankees trailing by seven runs with little hope of coming back, especially since they had managed only two hits against a collection of little-used Yankees relief pitchers.
But just as they had done when facing a seemingly insurmountable deficit in the standings, the Rays again demonstrated their refusal to concede and completed a comeback for the ages. Two of them, in fact.
“I haven’t wrapped my mind around it,” Rays Manager Joe Maddon said. “We’ve been too busy trying to do this. I haven’t grasped it at all yet. I will at some point. I’m aware. I’m totally aware of the circumstances and our place in baseball history.”
Trailing by 7-0 after seven innings, the Rays scored six runs in the eighth, most of which came on Longoria’s three-run homer off reliever Luis Ayala. And in the ninth inning, the Rays tied the score on Dan Johnson’s pinch-hit home run.
With the Rays trailing, 7-6, and down to their final strike, Johnson — with only one home run to his credit before the at-bat — laced a 2-2 changeup from Cory Wade down the right-field line and into the seats to tie the score at 7-7.
The game began in front of 29,518 fans at Tropicana Field, the Rays’ largest home attendance since July 16. But after seven dismal innings, many fans had left the building, thinking there was no way their team, which had played sloppy and tight to that point, could come back.
But the noise that the remaining die-hards made was deafening.
The Yankees built their early lead behind two home runs by Mark Teixeira, including a grand slam off starter David Price in the second inning. He hit a solo shot in the fourth, and Andruw Jones added another in the fifth. The Yankees also scored a run in the first inning, thanks to Rays second baseman Ben Zobrist’s two-out error that allowed Curtis Granderson to score.
The Rays would not go away, though, and as the game moved through the tense extra innings, the Yankees would win or lose with Proctor since they were not going to jeopardize Mariano Rivera or Dave Roberston in a game that did not matter for them.
So it was left to Proctor, the Yankees’ 11th pitcher. He struck out B. J. Upton, but Longoria’s ball found that cut-away part of the left-field fence, and the one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history was complete.
“You play for almost five hours, and in the end it all came together in a matter of seconds,” Longoria said.
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