TAMPA -- Jake Mangum got the ball. The wall got his batting gloves.
With two outs in the ninth inning of the Rays’ 1-0 loss to the Red Sox on a windy Wednesday night at George M. Steinbrenner Field, Mangum tracked a Carlos Narváez fly ball straight back to the warning track, ditched his hat and made a quick cut toward right field to record the out.
The 29-year-old rookie’s momentum led him to spin and bounce off the fence. In the process, the white batting gloves he had secured in his back pocket got stuck between two padded panels along the outfield wall.
Mangum didn’t realize he’d lost his gear until he returned to Tampa Bay’s dugout, so the gloves remained wedged in the wall during the bottom of the ninth before eventually making their way back to Mangum.
“Some guys let me know,” he said afterward. “I've never seen that, probably will never see it again.
“That was weird, but I made it interesting. I didn't have a great route on that ball, so I made it look a little bit harder than it needed to be. But just happy I could catch it and get us back in the dugout.”
For the Rays, part of the process of adapting to their new home ballpark has been learning how the wind shifts at Steinbrenner Field. Mangum, for instance, throws grass into the air every inning -- sometimes it blows straight out one inning, only to zip straight in an inning later.
So when reliever Eric Orze fired a 94 mph fastball over the plate that Narváez bashed out to center field at 107.4 mph, Mangum went straight back before making what manager Kevin Cash called a “heck of a play.”
“He stayed with it and made just a tremendous play in that moment to keep it to one [run],” Cash said.