Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Rays Win the Pennant and Head Back to the World Series

Start printing the World Series tickets in St. Petersburg. The Tampa Bay Rays are American League champions again, beating the Cleveland Guardians 7-3 on Monday night at Tropicana Field to close out the ALCS in six games and reach the World Series for the third time in franchise history.

Tampa Bay led early, scoring twice in the second inning and once in the third, and then finished the job the way this team has all October: late power. Junior Caminero hit a two-run homer in the seventh, his first career postseason home run, off Cleveland closer Cade Smith. Cleveland scratched back with two runs in the eighth, and Yandy Diaz answered in the bottom half with a two-run homer of his own to restore the cushion and start the party.

Peralta’s redemption arc wins MVP

The series MVP award went to Freddy Peralta, and it is hard to imagine a better story. Peralta arrived from the Mets at the trade deadline after a rough stretch in New York – a 4.99 ERA across 22 starts – and his Tampa Bay debut was worse, seven runs against Colorado. Then the Rays did what the Rays do. Their coaches rebuilt his confidence, and he rewarded them with a postseason ERA of 1.08. In the ALCS he allowed one run across 12 innings in three outings, including 5 and a third strong innings on Monday before leaving to a standing ovation.

Asked what he would have said in July if told he would be ALCS MVP, Peralta laughed: he would have said you are crazy. Then he shared the credit the way this clubhouse always does – this is not only mine, he said, we all earned this.

A World Series with a guaranteed first-time champion

Waiting for Tampa Bay are the Milwaukee Brewers, who swept the Dodgers in the National League and will host Game 1 on Friday night, October 23, at American Family Field. Here is the delicious part: neither franchise has ever won a World Series. Milwaukee’s only previous trip was in 1982. Tampa Bay lost in 2008 and again in 2020. By the end of next week, one of baseball’s five never-champions comes off that list for good.

The symmetry is lovely. The Brewers finished with the National League’s best record at 103-59. The Rays were the American League’s top seed and swept the Yankees before this six-game classic, a series that survived a rain postponement and three straight days of momentum swings. Just yesterday, Drew Rasmussen had dealt Tampa Bay to the brink in Game 5. On Monday, his teammates walked through the door he opened.

First pitch on Friday cannot come soon enough. Two patient, homegrown teams, two fan bases that have waited a combined 85 years for a title, and one trophy that is guaranteed to live somewhere new. That is October baseball at its best.

How the night was won, inning by inning

The box score tells a tidy story. Tampa Bay scored in the second and third, Peralta kept Cleveland’s bats quiet through the middle innings, and the Guardians’ only early answer came in the sixth. Then came the exchange of haymakers that decided the pennant: Caminero’s two-run shot in the seventh, Cleveland’s two-run rally in the eighth that cut the lead and hushed the building, and Diaz’s answering homer in the bottom half that restored the four-run cushion and let the Trop breathe again. Both teams finished with seven hits. The difference was timing, and Tampa Bay owned it.

There is one more layer of sweetness for the home fans. This is the same ballpark, and the same franchise, that played a whole season displaced by hurricane damage not long ago – a chapter we noted in our Game 5 coverage when Rasmussen put them on the brink. A pennant won at home, in front of the people who waited through all of that, lands differently. On Friday the Rays walk into Milwaukee as the American League’s best, chasing the first title in team history against a club chasing the exact same thing. Somebody’s wait ends next week. That is a World Series worth clearing your evenings for.

And spare a thought for the man who started Monday’s scoring patience at the plate. Tampa Bay’s lineup did not chase Cleveland’s best pitches early; it worked counts, stacked baserunners and let the game tilt. That discipline is the thread that runs from April to this pennant: a club with one of the game’s smallest payrolls out-thinking, out-developing and finally out-lasting everyone in its league. The Brewers will test every bit of it starting Friday. On Monday night in St. Petersburg, though, there was nothing left to test. There was only a pile of happy Rays on the infield, a trophy with their name going on it, and a city that gets to dream in World Series colors for the first time in six years.

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