Just got back. One out left. Flyball right center. Out.
Rays have won their first post-season game ever. That's a quote from the play-by-play guy on TBS
NIce.
At about 2:15, I met Scottie outside of Savannah's, and we hustled over to the Trop and got there just before the first pitch. We decided to hit the Power Alley Pub, our usual haunt. The old dude at the escalator told it wasn't open. It was reserved by MLB for a party.
He said we could go to the cigar bar. We rode up and walked right into the Power Alley with no one at the door, grabbed a seat looking out on left-centerfield. We've done this during the regular season. Seats are sweet.
We just strolled in like we owned the place, and there were probably 100 other folks who did the same thing.
I've been to sell-outs at the Trop before, this year in particular. But there were always blocks of empty blue seats. Sell-out maybe, but the place wasn't maxed. Today it was. There wasn't any patches of empty seats to be seen.
Do I need to tell you it was loud?
Perhaps you've heard about Longoria's day. Two pitches, two swings, two home runs. The first one landed in the stands about 50 feet away from us. There's something so absolutely cool about screaming and high-fiving people you have never met. Everyone's your friend.
The Chisox came back and put three on the board with a home run. Man, the place was deflated. But I just had a hunch the Rays could hit today, and they did.
The centerfielder was in shouting range of us on the deck, and this guy decided he was going to heckle Ken Griffey Jr. "You're old, time to hang it up!." Shit like that. Stupid but funny.
Scottie's neighbor William "Bre" Breland turned up.
Longoria hit a single to drive in another run. Things were going our way.
In the 7th, relief pitcher Grant Balfour came to the mound with the bases loaded (I'm pretty sure.) He struck out two batters in a row with hard fastballs. Bre had the quote of the day, something he heard from way back when. "He musta breezed him."
Then, some unpleasantness. A bunch of cops came through and started clearing people out. One officer wasn't particularly nice about it. Scottie cracked wise, I didn't heard what he said. We headed toward the door. The cop followed us! Talking in Scottie's ear, "What'd you say?" C'mon, cop. Chill
Scottie can have a hair-trigger temper, and he started to turn around and have some words with the cop. I grabbed him by his elbow, looked over my shoulder at the cop (who was still talking) and said, "We're out, man, forget about it."
The cops kept at it: "You wanna go for a ride?" Something like that. Clearly talking about jail.
Very unprofessional. If you're a cop, and you're clearing out a room, and a guy has cracks wise but keeps on moving, you walk away.
Scottie was pissed, but Bre — a 65-year-old African-American man — said, "that's a lose-lose" to Scottie. My boy was fuming, but he walked away with us. Last thing you need is to have to post bail after the Rays win their first ever playoff game.
Still, I wish I'd had the wherewithal to get check out the cop's nametag. I'd would've liked to have named him in this post.
It's all good. Rays up 1-0.
1:44: Scottie just scored tix. Gotta hustle to see the first pitch. Catch up w/ya after the game.
1:33: I'm glad the Rays kept Fernando Perez on the roster. Good to have Crawford back, but what if he's rusty, or hurts his hand again? Also, good move to leave the Fat Man, Troy Percival, off. The geezer's a gamer, but he hasn't pitched well in a couple of months
12:56: Lineups just posted. As follows:
White Sox
SS Cabrera
RF Dye
DH Thome
1B Konerko
CF Griffey Jr.
2B Ramirez
C Pierzynski
3B Uribe
SP Vasquez
RAYS
2B Iwamura
CF Upton
1B Pena
3B Longoria
LF Crawford
DH Floyd
C Navarro
RF Gross
SS Bartlett
SP Shields
12:25: It was a good plan. Set up the laptop at Ferg's, do some blog updates, see if I could score a ticket. If not, keep live blogging from the bar with updates and comment.
It was a bad plan. My computer was configured wrong, and I couldn't get a wireless signal. By the time I found a radio station tech guy cool enough to set me up (thanks Kimo), I couldn't find a power outlet or a seat. Well, I did find a seat, but it was outside of eye-range of a TV. Kind of defeats the purpose.
So I bagged it. I'm back at Casa Snider. My pal Scottie is going to work the area around the Trop in a bit to see if he can score us a couple tix. If so, I'm dashing out of NE St. Pete and down to the stadium. If not, I'll hang here, Scottie'll come over, we'll pop some brews, and I'll blog from the comforts of home.
Catch up with you a bit.
Good morning, sports fans! It's been a long wait, but for the first time in the history, the Rays are playing October baseball, led by the 2008 readers pick for Best Coach in the Bay, Joe Maddon.
Here's our coverage of the Rays' first playoff game. Stay tuned for updates as we get closer to first pitch (2:37 p.m.). Feel free to join in and comment if you can't get near a TV set.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2008.