Exorcising demons

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Tampa Bay Rays are going to the World Series.

Let that roll around on your tongue for a bit. Let it sink in.

Still hard to fathom? You're not alone.

Even some Rays, after their heart-stopping 3-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Sunday night clinched their first World Series berth and kept their magical, improbable, unfathomable, worst-to-first season alive, had trouble comprehending it all.

"I can't believe it, I really can't believe it," Tampa Bay reliever J.P. Howell said amid a wild celebration in Tropicana Field. "I just don't know what to say. Thank you, God. Thank you for this gift."

A gift, it wasn't. This was as hard-earned a victory as there could be, with starter Matt Garza giving the Rays seven-plus innings of one-run, two-hit ball and 118 high-energy pitches, and rookie left-hander David Price filling a glaring void at closer by striking out three of five batters for the save.

Tampa Bay used four relievers to suppress the Red Sox in the eighth, and when second baseman Akinori Iwamura fielded Jed Lowrie's wicked-hop grounder and stepped on second for the final out to end Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, the Rays dog-piled each other on the mound.

Doormats for a decade, last-place finishers in the AL East for nine of their previous 10 years of existence, losers of 96 games last season and 101 in 2006, the Rays withstood the hard-charging Red Sox, who were looking to erase their third 3-1 ALCS deficit in five years, to earn a World Series berth opposite the Philadelphia Phillies.

Tampa Bay had averaged 97 losses a year in its decade as the Devil Rays before dropping the "Devil" from the team name and then winning 97 games and the East division title this season. But the Rays showed the heart and resiliency of champions in the ALCS. They bounced back from an epic Game 5 collapse, when they blew a 7-0, seventh-inning lead, and a 4-2 Game 6 loss to win a tense, taut Game 7 against the defending World Series champions.

And what the 104th World Series will now get, when the Phillies and Rays play Game 1 Wednesday night in Tropicana Field, is more cowbell.

"That was amazing, incredible," said first baseman Carlos Pena, whose pregame team meeting helped calm the Rays. "What Garza did, what Price did, I don't have words to describe what I'm feeling right now. This is beautiful, a perfect story."