Score alert! Tampa Bay Devil Rays take 2-0 series lead over the Minnesota Twins in the 1998 American League Divisional Series after close 2-1 victory at Tropicana Field
The Twins started the scoring early, but the Devil Rays would tie in the 4th. In a mirror of Game One, the rest of the game would be a nail biter until Christopher Richmond for the D-Rays smacked a walk off homerun in the bottom of the ninth, sending the capacity crowd at Tropicana Field into a frenzy.
"What a moment for this team, this city, the whole Tampa Bay region," D-Rays owner Jack Dacks (pictured below) said after the game. "This inaugural season has been like such a fantasy for us in the Bay Area...we just don't ever want it to end."
And with the way that the Devil Rays are playing, it doesn't look like it is going to end any time soon. The Series will now switch to the famed "Homerdome" in Minneapolis for Games Three and Four, while fans in the St. Petersburg area will be able to come to Tropicana Field to watch the games on the jumbotrons. Both teams are turf teams, used to playing indoors, so there's no telling how much of a change in venue is going to impact this series. Both teams are very evenly matched, even finishing the regular season with identical records.
"Our bullpen has got to get better," Twins president Herman Dugger (pictured below) said. "This is now two games we had in the bag...and we just gave it away."
Perhaps a change of venue will fix all that.