Rays Tank: Same story, different day

This is not really a Rays Tank. Yesterday was the scientifically proven least fun game of the season to watch, so of course, we did the logical thing and recapped it twice. This is Brett's recap. You can read mine here, because I'm sure what you need is to REALLY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY. Brett's title is original, which makes this meta.

Anyway, I've got to run out of the house early, so this can serve as the tank. I'm adding one link at the end so that it seems more legitimate. -Ian

Ugh.

I mean, jeeeeeeeeeeez guys. Really? Are you serious guys?

C'mon guys, c'mon.

I mean...I just...I mean seriously? It's like, I don't even know any more. It's hard, ya know? It's hard.

Man, you're just killing me, you see what I'm saying? You catch my drift? You're just eating me up. Inside, here. In the inside place. Where I keep my happiness and my joy. You know the place. You're like *kkkkrip* just yanking it out of me. Of my heart, I mean. Ugh.

• The Rays got off to an early two lead off of a Matt Joyce sac fly and an Evan Longoria home run but at the end of the inning ughhh. For the third straight game they score first and in the second inning but after that ughhhhhhhhhhhhh. Chris Pearce hit a one-out home run, and with runners on first and third, Nelson Cruz stole second which prompted Adam Jones to steal home when Molina couldn't hang onto the ball which was all like goddddddddd whatever
• Hellickson struggled through the first four innings, allowing a man on base in every inning, and only faced the minimum in an inning after Molina picked off Caleb Joseph. Meanwhile Bud Norris did seem to settle in, until the fifth, only allowing a base runner via a walk.
• In the fifth jeez pretty much the same exact thing happened are you kidding me. Longo scored Zobrist on a sac fly and James Loney doubled in Matt Joyce from first to score 2 runs once again, yippee I guess. Maybe Longo is finally turning some kind of corner. But oh look at that at the bottom of the inning the Orioles knock out Jeremy Hellickson with a hit, a walk, and a hit, and score two off of Jeff Beliveau when Escobar airmailed a throw to first, scoring two runs and jeeeeeez it's like air leaving a balloon this feeling I have in my chest right now. That'd be Escobar's second error of the game and you know, I mean, you know? Just...you know.
• The Baltimore bullpen was very efficient, facing the minimum between the seventh and the ninth after Bud Norris left in the sixth, and goodness it's hard to watch this team right now but it's not impossible, nothing is ever impossible, and God help me I do love this game so much and will be there through fall's turn of the screw, when things turn to dust and we start over, fair-weather fans never see the beauty in the eye of the storm
• Joel Peralta finished the game off for the Rays, and was pretty effective, entering in a tough spot in the seventh and getting a groundout, and allowing only one hit in the eighth and as I sat on my couch and watched this game I was struck anew by how old Peralta seemed, visually, and I had to double check to make sure that he wasn't over 40 years old, but no, he is a 38 year old man, a 38 year old man in a down year playing a children's game on a contract with a club options for the next three years. Each year as he gets older and older and plays he cannot help but wonder whether the best is behind him, whether he is now past the halfway point, on the perpetual downward slope of a career that has survived two presidential administrations, and what happens if this year that it ends of course it is not the year that it ends but what happens if it is the year that it ends, that thought doesn't leave quite that easily. He is a freak of nature, a middle-aged man playing a children's game for a below-average team and as his season and career slowly draw to a close how can he be anything but weary.
• In the seventh inning Kirby Yates, after retiring the first two men he faced, allowed a double to Nelson Cruz, intentionally walked Crush Davis, and allowed a soft base hit to right field to hand the winning run to the Orioles, and somewhere, in the long-tortured sports town of Kansas City, Missouri there are baseball fans who have not been alive long enough to see their team make the postseason, who currently cling to an impossible hope, a mirage that everyday becomes less phantom and more form. The team seems to thrive off of late-inning moments like a certain team from the past we in the Tampa Bay area certainly know well, and I'm hard-pressed to find anyone here who does not wish that particular team well in that regard but it is hard because the playoffs are a zero-sum game and we have become fat, fat on the success of a low-budget, mid-market team consistently making the playoffs. These losses hurt worse than they did years ago, because winning is no longer a novelty, because we expect more, because our team were supposed to be champions this year for goodness sakes and now the goal does not seem to be a postseason trip, but a winning record, a consolation prize invented by teams like the Mariners and the Blue Jays and the Royals to give a fan base hope. But here we are clawing for the last bone at the team, the smallest of pegs on which we can hang our hats and wrap 2014 up with a tired if earnest "well, we tried" even though flags fly forever and no one builds statues for average team. We are outside looking in, and what pains us the most is not the sting of the snow on our cheeks but the memory of the fireplace's warmth.