Rays closer quotes Ted Lasso after giving up walkoff home run to Ceddanne Rafaela
"We're going to be goldfish."
Entering Friday’s game against the Red Sox, Rays closer Pete Fairbanks had yet to allow a home run all season long. That changed by the time the game ended.
Ceddanne Rafaela hit a two-run homer off Fairbanks in the ninth inning to deliver the Red Sox a 5-4 walkoff win on Friday. Facing a 1-2 count, Rafaela took Fairbanks’s 86 mph slider that was low in the zone and crushed it 406 feet over the Green Monster for a no-doubter home run.
As Rafaela admired his long ball, Fairbanks stared at the ball leaving Fenway Park with a look of disbelief on his face. It also marked the second straight game that the Rays’ bullpen blew a late lead to the Red Sox and Fairbanks’s second blown save in as many tries against Boston this year.
With those stats being pretty concerning for the Rays, Fairbanks dropped a quote from the hit TV show “Ted Lasso” when asked how the team will turn the page.
“We’re going to be goldfish and forget about it,” Fairbanks told reporters.
Friday’s loss also marked the Rays’ 10th loss in their last 15 games, allowing the Red Sox to pass them in the AL East and wild card standings. As that could be a cause for concern, Fairbanks continued to quote the mantra from “Ted Lasso.”
“It certainly hasn’t been fun, but [expletive] we went like, 26-9,” Fairbanks said. “You’re going to have these spots. It sucks that it’s on us. If it’s not on us, then we struggle, and it’s on somebody else.
“I’ll bear the brunt of this one and we’ll deal with it and we’ll move on. We’re going to be goldfish. A famous British soccer coach talks about being goldfish.”
Of course, Ted Lasso is a fictional television character who coaches the English soccer squad, AFC Richmond. Early on in the show, as his squad was struggling, Lasso implored one of his standout players to be like a goldfish due to their short memory spans. The quote was also said by Lasso’s son in a key point in the finale of the show’s third season.
The Rays will certainly have to have that mentality as they still have two more games against the Red Sox this weekend. But Fairbanks didn’t easily turn the page after a miscue on the mound prior to Rafaela’s home run. In the prior at-bat, Fairbanks threw three straight balls to Roman Anthony before walking him on the fifth pitch.
“You don’t walk people if you’re getting in three-ball counts,” Fairbanks said of that walk. “I thought I made better pitches than I did. Obviously, my head was drawing around. I can’t see. For the most part, I was within myself. But you can’t walk a guy there and you can’t throw a slider to a guy who dies. It is what it is.”
That walk allowed Rafaela to play hero on Friday, a role that he’s grown accustomed to for the Red Sox as of late. Since the start of June, Rafaela has hit .317, with his walkoff hit marking his 10th home run in that span, making him one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters recently.
“I wasn’t trying to throw it in the loop. I sure wasn’t trying to throw it in the loop,” Fairbanks said of the pitch Rafaela hit for a home run. “You make a bad pitch, you get a bad result, and we go home unhappy.”
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