Youthful Rays having time of their lives
canada.com
They're young, but the American League champs are acting as if they've been winners forever, John Lott reports from St. Petersburg, Florida.
John Lott
Canwest News Service
October 21, 2008
As the ceremonies on the field continued late Sunday night, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher James Shields spotted his wife, Ryane, standing on her toes and waving her arms, beyond a steel barricade.
Shields slipped past the barrier and they ran to each other, his wife leaping into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist as they kissed and hugged and grinned and twirled on the artificial turf, happier than they had ever been in their lives.
It was a portrait of pure, spontaneous joy, the kind that sport at its best can generate, and baseball was at its best Sunday night. In one season, the amazing Rays grew into a winner, full of confident kids acting as if they had been champions forever.
So it was that, before David Price went out to pitch the ninth inning, Evan Longoria took him aside for a pep talk. Price has 31 days of major-league service time. Longoria has about six months.
"He told me this is what I was born for, that this is what I've played baseball my entire life for," Price said. "I'm older than him. He's a rookie. He doesn't act like it. He doesn't play like it. When he speaks, people listen."
Longoria, the league's presumptive rookie of the year, turned 23 on Oct. 7, roughly six weeks after Price reached the same milestone. These are the fine distinctions of age among the Rays, whose oldest starting pitcher is Shields, 26.
Among the Rays' postseason heroes, Price was the least likely. His pro career began on May 22. After going 12-1 with a 2.30 earned-run average in the minors, he pitched in five September games for the Rays. Kids that green do not get the ball in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the American League Championship Series in October.
Price got it, though, and, doing what he was born to do, recorded the final four outs, three on strikeouts. Moments after he finished, he found himself with catcher Dioner Navarro at the bottom of a pile of rejoicing teammates, wondering if he would survive to pitch in the World Series.
"I thought I was going to die," Price, still wide-eyed at the thought, said yesterday. "Me and Navi, on the bottom, trying to gasp for air down there. I wouldn't trade that for anything, though."
Manager Joe Maddon called on Price, ahead of more experienced help, with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth inning. The 6-foot-6 left-hander with the hellacious slider struck out J.D. Drew on a checked swing and pounded his glove as 40,473 fans rocked Tropicana Field and his teammates went nuts.
"It was awesome, seeing those guys in that dugout, how happy they were for me, for themselves, just knowing that we were three outs away from going to the World Series," Price said.
When he put those outs in the record book, when the celebration abated, Price felt a true sense of where he fit. His gaze fastened on the veterans who had survived the Rays' losing years, especially Rocco Baldelli and Carl Crawford, who overcame daunting health challenges to play in the postseason.
"Seeing those guys, how happy they were, how much they deserved this -- a lot more than I do -- that's what's really awesome," Price said.
Price is mature beyond his years, as Maddon and pitching coach Jim Hickey like to say, and that was why they did not hesitate when the Rays faced the biggest crossroads of their history. Price may be a starter as soon as next season, but, a few innings earlier, Maddon and Hickey recalled how effective Price had been as a reliever in September.
"As a matter of fact, we talked about J.D. Drew, and we said, 'Hell, yeah, we'd go to him,'" Hickey said.
Price's ascension follows the pattern of a season in which so many young Rays players blossomed in unison, and more experienced teammates took forward steps as well.
One was Matt Garza, a pitcher acquired from Minnesota in the offseason, who won ALCS MVP honours for beating the Boston Red Sox twice, including Sunday's clincher, which got the Rays into the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies starting here tomorrow night.
"Me, that's my third season in the big leagues. Price? He has been here three weeks, and the guy's closing out an ALCS Game 7," Garza said.
"That's amazing."
Compared to Price, Garza is a geezer. He turns 25 next month.
That is just another reason Price believes there will be many more portraits of joy for the Rays in years to come.
"I hear it all the time: This is the worst team the Rays are going to throw out there for the next five or six years," he said.
"To be a part of this right now is a blessing."
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008 |
