Tampa Bay Rays beat Boston Red Sox 7-4 – MLB Update
Tampa Bay Rays continued to impress the critics as they beat Boston Red Sox 7-4 at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday, May 25 in the opening game of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Red Sox will be disappointed to lose the game after they scored first with Kevin Youkilis’ single to centre in the first inning. Matt Joyce brought the Rays right back into the contest as he homered to right centre in the third and Carlos Pena, B.J. Upton
and Ben Zobrist scored.
Elliot Johnson also made a useful contribution with a home run to left in the fourth inning and Carlos Pena homered to right to give the Rays an impassable 7-1 lead. Adrian Gonzalez and Mike Aviles helped the Red Sox reduce Tampa Bay’s lead to 4-7 but credit
must be given to Alex Cobb who held the Red Sox to just two runs and three hits while striking out two and walking four in five solid innings.
"We thought it was dirty and we did the best we can to protect ourselves," Pena said. "We saw one behind his back and almost hit him, and then the last one hits him. It's crazy when you see things happening and it actually does. Everyone in our dugout knew
it was coming and when it did, it was like: `There it is.'"
"Our guys got it. We had every reason to be totally into the push-back right there. We didn't start anything. We don't start stuff. We'll finish stuff, but we don't start it," Maddon said in a post game interview.
Joe Maddon and company have hardly lost any games at Tropicana Field this season and it seems they have now worked out the perfect method to win games on the road. Showing great composure and temperament, the Rays prevailed in a game that was played on a
fairly competitive note.
Tampa Bay will enter the second game as the favourites and it will be interesting to see if they can sweep the Red Sox to move past the American League leaders; Baltimore Orioles.
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