The way the Tampa Bay Rays were cleaning house and slashing payroll, Denard Span spent much of spring training wondering if he’d ever play a game for his hometown team.
“I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I was going to get this opportunity. … It’s just a true blessing, just to be able to play in front of my family and friends. I can’t ask for anything better,” Span, who grew up in Tampa and was obtained in a December trade that sent Evan Longoria to San Francisco.
A .283 hitter over parts of 10 seasons with the Giants, Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals, was part of a starting lineup featuring just one position player from opening day a year ago.
The Rays were shut out on one hit through the sixth by Chris Sale, and took advantage of four walks in the eighth to come back.
Span lined a 3-2 pitch off the right field wall, setting off a raucous celebration among the sellout crowd of 31,042 at Tropicana Field.
“My heart started racing. I could hear the roar of the crowd. If I could have cried, I would have cried. But I was running so I couldn’t,” Span said.
“Everybody greeted me with a bunch of energy, a bunch of love,” he said of the party that continued in the clubhouse. “That was probably in all my 9 1/2, 10 years, probably the best postgame celebration by any team I’ve been on. Just a fun time.”
The Red Sox lost in Alex Cora’s first game as a major league manager. They wasted a superb start from Sale, who showed no ill effects from being hit by a line drive in the hip in his final spring training start. The 2017 big league strikeout leader fanned nine and walked three.
Boston built a 4-0 lead against Rays starter Chris Archer, with Eduardo Nunez hitting a two-run, inside-the-park homer and Rafael Devers driving in two runs with a seventh-inning double and a RBI grounder in the second.
Archer allowed four runs and six hits in six-plus innings.
Nunez’s inside-the-park homer was the second of his career.
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