Tampa Bay won 28 games this season after trailing by at least two runs, which was the highest total for any major league team. Well, add two more games to that total.

The Rays rallied twice vs. Chicago and according to the Elias Sports Bureau: "Tampa Bay is the first team in major league history to win each of its first two postseason games in franchise history, overcoming a deficit of at least two runs in each game."

It looks like the money spent by the Rays' marketing department on all those ridiculously annoying cow bells might actually have been worth it.

I speak from experience, having sat in the middle of a school group (ages 8-10) during a recent Rays' game, when I say that those cow bells are in fact annoying.

But my attitude this morning is who cares?

I'd gladly have sat in the middle of that same group with twice the cow bells as before to see the Rays' rally in person last night (I'm stuck in Germany, had to stay up until 3:30am to see the entire game, or I'd have been there).  

In the meantime, here's hoping a Rays vs. Red Sox showdown is in our immediate future. Hey, if the Rays are going to go from worst-to-first to win the A.L. East and then advance to the League Championship Series, they might as well continue this unbelievable run by dethroning the reigning World Series champs on their way to winning the pennant.

Major League Baseball: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports, with a foreword by The Baseball Collector, Zack Hample, is the latest title in the Sports by the Numbers series.

www.sportsbythenumbers.com