Baseball 2013: Rays Advance Past Indians

Last night the Tampa Bay Rays stopped the momentum-heavy run of the Cleveland Indians dead in its tracks with an impressive defensive effort, winning 4-0 in the one allotted wild card playoff game between them.  Now they can go back to playing in a real multiple-game series, the next opponent being division winner Boston.  It was a little harrowing, going through the strange final games in the regular season, as three teams were vying for the two available wild card spots.  Night after night, Tampa Bay, Cleveland, and the Texas Rangers played and won.  The Rays were interesting in that they swept the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees, both good teams that had been in the playoff picture.  Meanwhile, the Indians and Rangers would go off on their own winning streaks, but their opponents were weak, inferior teams.  I felt that it was an almost hopeless uphill battle for Tampa Bay, but finally for the last three games of the 162-game regular season, they got to play Toronto, which was in dead last place in their division.  The Rays, going into that series, were still one game ahead of Cleveland and two ahead of Texas.  I'll just go on to say that the latter two won the rest of their scheduled games.  But Toronto surprisingly beat Tampa Bay decisively in the first two games of their series, putting the Rays' playoff hopes in jeopardy.  Tampa Bay managed somehow to just barely squeak out a 7-6 win, though, in the final game, putting them in a tie with Texas for the final playoff spot.  The two played a tiebreaker game (in Texas) and "my" team prevailed.  Then they went on the road to Cleveland for another winner-advance-loser-go-home game and here we are, with the Rays being one of the "final eight" left in the running for World Series glory in 2013...