After beating the Texas Rangers on Sept. 3, the Boston Red Sox were 84-54. Although half a game behind the Yankees in the American League East, the Red Sox had a nine-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild card and roughly a 99.6 percent chance of making the playoffs. Fast forward one excruciating month to a dead heat with Tampa coming into tonight's bitter imbroglio. Boston struggles ahead of laughingstock Baltimore by a single run until a rain delay clears the field, leaving them in the surreal position of rooting for the hated Yankees playing down in Florida. They can only watch from the sidelines as the rival Rays, tied with Boston in the pennant race but down 7-0 against New York, roar back to life with six runs in the eighth inning and a tie run on the final pitch at the bottom of the ninth. And then, after blowing two different strikes that would have salvaged the game, Boston loses to Baltimore, completing what is arguably the worst late-breaking collapse in the history of major league baseball.
posted by Rhaomi on Sep 28, 2011 - 196 comments

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. (via)
posted by Joe Beese on Aug 12, 2010 - 18 comments

Robot penguins of the water and air are manufactured by German robotics manufacturer Festo, as well as aquatic and airborn rays (as in the fish). Here's another aquapenguin video from Festo's YouTube channel. These videos are so futuristic they don't seem real. [via, fittingly enough, William Gibson's Twitterfeed]
posted by Kattullus on Jun 10, 2009 - 34 comments

Tampa Bay Rays beat Red Sox, head to World Series - The Tampa Bay Devil Rays began the 2008 season having never made the playoffs and or finishing the season above .500. Motivated by skipper Joe Madden's mathematically questionable slogan "9 = 8" ("9 players going hard for 9 innings means 1 of 8 playoff spots") but not considered a competitor for the AL East top spot by most fans and analysts, the Rays used their new name, uniforms and confidence to slowly emerge as one of the best teams in baseball this year. [more inside]
posted by null terminated on Oct 19, 2008 - 115 comments

Geopathic Stress , otherwise known as negative earth energies, black streams or earth rays, have become acknowledged as a hazard to health.
posted by quonsar on Feb 16, 2004 - 15 comments