Tampa Bay Rays: 2008 American League Champions (no, it's not 1 April)

(With apologies to Joel Sherman)

Joe Maddon almost made the same mistake Buck Showalter made in 1995.

Just in the nick of time, as though defusing a bomb right before the counter reached 00:01, Maddon remembered the lesson that he was supposed to have learned last week, and now the Tampa Bay Rays are headed to the World Series.

In 1995, Showalter, you will remember, hadn't realized the talent he had in Mariano Rivera, so when the ALDS was on the line in Game Five, he didn't use Rivera.

In 2008, Maddon almost made the same mistake with David Price.

It took a bases loaded situation in the eighth inning for Maddon to finally realize that Dan Wheeler, JP Howell and Chad Bradford could not get it done, but, as the Rays fans are probably thinking, at least he came to his senses.

Now, the Tampa Bay Rays are headed to their franchise's first World Series.

The ALCS, of course, should have never gotten to a game seven. Had Maddon used Price at perhaps any time in the eighth or ninth inning of game five, the Rays would have likely clinched in Boston.

However, the Rays were lucky--game five was not an elimination game and afforded them a very important lesson: 27 outs in a baseball game and you have to play all of them. There's no clock to run out.

Now, going into the World Series, the Rays know what it's like to choke, and to face elimination, and more importantly, how important to get over it and put it in the past.

Congratulations to them, though Boston shouldn't lose heart--they gritted through it and gave baseball a game five that will enter the pantheon of all-time greats.

There will be a Rays-Phillies Series Preview up sometime before Game One.

Remember, get your entries in for the Monumental Trade Proposal Contest!

Can You Believe What We Just Saw?

All right, before I write this post proper, I need to stress that I'm writing this as a baseball fan, not as a Yankee fan. Don't worry, I hate the Red Sox as much as ever.

***

Part of the reason baseball has the magic it does is because on any given day,anything can happen.

Unlike the other major sports, in baseball, there's no clock to run out.

In football or basketball, you can build an insurmountable lead and then play easy the rest of the way--if you're up, in basketball, by 30 points with two minutes to spare, you're pretty much set.

In baseball, it doesn't quite work that way.

The young Tampa Rays learned it the hard way tonight, building a sizable lead and then treating it as though it was a guaranteed win.

As for the game itself, however, regardless of what happens in the rest of the series, this will easily go down as a classic LCS game.

Last year's postseason was generally void of excitement; this year's has had some incredible games, and now, it looks like, one incredible series.

It's been a while since we've had a classic Postseason game, a game that reminds you why October is so important, but tonight we had one.

Tampa still has a three games to two series lead over Boston, but if Yankees' fans learned anything from 2004, it's that one game can change the feeling of an entire series. If tonight wasn't that type of game, I'm not sure what is...

On the bright side, it looks like Joe Maddon did well switching Kazmir and Shields, and now has his ace on the mound for Game Six.