Holy crap...
To quote the legendary Jack Buck, "I don't believe what I just saw". Trailing 5-0 going to the top of the 9th and staring in face of a 2-3 deficit in the Series, the Rays improbably rallied to score 7 times in the inning, taking a 7-5 win and a 3-2 series lead going back to Tampa. Cincinnati ace Josh Ward had completely shut down the Rays on 2 hits through 8 innings and actually retired the first man in the 9th as Tony Cordova flew to right, but he walked Dan Gregory and came out on 123 pitches. The Rays went to work on Luis Razo and Josh Alexander had an RBI single but even then it still looked like a consolation run. But Luis Barela walked to load the bases and up stepped Doug Johns, who took a pitch from former Ray Billy Haroutunian into the LF seats to tie the game. And after Mike Willis (who shouldn't have even been in the game, more on that in a minute) walked and went to second on a Haroutunian wild pitch, Dave Frick of all people took him deep with a 2-run shot to win it. There was still the issue of closing out the game as the bullpen was burned from last night's 14-inning affair so 2-way guy Chris Parham, who in retrospect got what was a key double play to get out of the 8th after the Reds scored three times, had his biggest moment of the season by getting a demoralized Cincinnati 1-2-3 in the 9th for his first-ever postseason win. So we head back to Tampa in two days' time when former Red Jim Brophy will try to clinch a 4th straight title for the Rays.
(Willis was only in the game because I screwed up the substitutions when Tomas Laboy was injured after hitting a double in the 3rd. I intended to bring in Jeff Googins for Laboy but mistakenly dragged Googins onto Jose Mendez's spot in the lineup, so I lost Mendez as well and had to put Willis in for him against the lefty Ward, and he was 0-2 against him. The Reds were already up 2-0 so I wasn't going to Ctrl+Alt+Delete the game to rectify the error. As for Laboy he tweaked his back, is day-to-day and could play in Game 6)