“Your choices are half chance.  So are everyone else’s.”
–Mary Schmich

Yeah, last night’s loss was heartbreaking.  For about five minutes.

Then I went to bed, and slept well, knowing the team we have coming home to Tampa Bay with a 3-2 lead.

None of us, least of all Joe Maddon, expected Grant Balfour, J.P. Howell and Dan Wheeler to cough up the game. Then again, Terry Francona didn’t expect Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield and Daisuke Matsuzaka to suck royally in Fenway Park. (Although, with Wakefield, I have no idea what he did expect, considering he was smashed from the Party Deck to the Monster Seats and back by the Rays all year long…)

It worked all year.  It just didn’t work quite to plan that particular time.  No problem, we still have two chances.  Though most of the Rays fans I know are calling Game 6 the do-or-die game.  And most of the Red Sox fans and the MSM I’ve seen have pretty much claimed victory for their team already, citing 2004 and 2007.

This isn’t Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park.  And we aren’t the Yankees or the Indians.

The Sox this year are 2-9 at Tropicana Field, and haven’t won consecutive games against the Rays since the second home series sweep in May.

And their biggest question mark is on the mound tomorrow afternoon.  Josh Beckett hasn’t been healthy in these late months, and has 12 ER over 9 1/3 IP, only 5 K, in the postseason.  James Shields, however, has been solid, with 5 ER over 13 2/3 IP, 10 K, so far.  In fact, he pitched better in his loss facing off against Dice-K and his junk pitches.

In baseball, nothing is ever certain.  But I have a feeling the Rays are again being underestimated.

In unrelated news, Chien-Ming Wang finally practiced pitching today, four months after shredding a foot ligament running the bases in Houston, leading to Hank Steinbrenner whining about the lack of a DH rule in the National League.  It comes one month too late to help the Yankees any in 2008.