Source: St. Petersburg Times

So many times over the past few months, the Rays have been the ones making the crucial late mistake that cost them a game.

Monday, they were happily — and, given the sound of their postgame celebration, noisily — on the other side, taking advantage of a rare error by Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira to score a much-needed 4-3 win in front of 21,742.

In reality, it was a ground ball hit by Elliot Johnson that bounced past Teixeira, allowing Brooks Conrad, who had just pinch-doubled in the tying run, to race home and put the Rays ahead to stay in the seventh. "I just missed it," Teixeira, a four-time Gold Glover, said of his first error of the season. "I don't know what happened. The ball obviously didn't do what I expected it to do."

But in theory, or at least Rays manager Joe Maddon's theory, it was the reward for perseverance and the beginning of a long-overdue evening out.

"The only way that happens is if you don't quit, if you don't give up, then it comes back to you," Maddon said. "The moment you start to say, 'Here we go again,' 'Woe is me,' victims' complex, then it just piles on. You can't permit that to happen. You've just got to keep fighting, keep trying to do the right thing, and eventually baseball rewards you."

Continue Reading...