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Roger Mooney

Roger Mooney covers the Tampa Bay Rays for The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and News Channel 8. He has covered the Rays since their first season in 1998, including 11 years for the Bradenton Herald. Roger has also covered Florida, South Florida and Florida State football, the Bucs and the Lightning.

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Maddon trashes Trop

Posted Aug 5, 2010 by Roger Mooney

Updated Aug 5, 2010 at 04:14 PM

ROGER MOONEY
ST. PETERSBURG Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon took a shot at Tropicana Field after the field provided little in the way of homefield advantage Thursday during the ninth inning of the Rays 8-6 loss to the Twins.

Jason Kubel’s two-out pop fly struck the A-ring catwalk over the center of the field. Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett had called for the ball, but could only make a futile run at the ball as it dropped safely to the turf as the the go-head run scored.

It was only the second time a ball has struck the A-ring, which is the highest ring from the field.

Afterwards, Maddon didn’t mince words when he talked about the need for a new stadium.

“It’s probably the perfect commercial advertisement for a reason to have a new ballpark,” Maddon said. “There’s no better reason than that. I know it works both ways, but to lose a game in a pennant situation like that because of a roof truly indicates why there’s a crying need for a new ballpark in this area, regardless of where they put it. It just needs to be a real baseball field where, if you lose the pennant by one game and look back at a game like that because the roof got in the way, we’d be very upset. So, again, there’s no better reason than that.”

Carlos Pena is the only other player to hit the A-ring, which is 190 feet above the field. Pena did it May 31, 2009 against the Twins.

The only other time when a catwalk directly affected the outcome of a game was on May 2, 2007 when Pena hit the B ring catwalk with one out in the 10th for a single. Pinch-runner Ben Zobrist eventually scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Dioner Navarro.

The losing team? The Twins.

“It’s good to get them back,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said.