ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 As the Boston Red Sox celebrated an improbable postseason berth at Tropicana Field, with Champagne and beer flowing all around, the clubhouse soundtrack seemed appropriate.<\/p>\n
“Stayin’ Alive.”<\/p>\n
“I think that pretty much says it all,” left fielder Roman Anthony said Sunday. “We pretty much stayed alive when nobody else thought we could. Now here we are.”<\/p>\n
The Red Sox were 32-46 and 15 1\/2 games back in the AL East race on June 24. They have since gone 52-25 and will be in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox lost 5-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays in their series finale, so couldn’t take care of things themselves. But about an hour after the game finished, the Houston Astros lost 4-2 to the Atlanta Braves, allowing the Red Sox to secure a wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the Astros-Braves result went final, Red Sox players, coaches and staff members gathered near the Tropicana Field mound for a team photograph.<\/p>\n
“I really don’t care how we got in, as long as we got in,” shortstop Trevor Story said.<\/p>\n
Interim manager Chad Tracy was in place for much of the turnaround. Since being appointed on April 26 following the dismissal of Alex Cora, the Red Sox have gone 74-55.<\/p>\n
“Look, we were not in a good spot,” Tracy said. “We were not playing good ball. But it shows you that if you stick to it, good things can happen. I couldn’t be more proud of this group.”<\/p>\n
First baseman Willson Contreras said he kept the faith, even when things trended downward, and the reward was sweet.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard not to have some tears over this,” Contreras said. “It’s a great accomplishment, but I don’t want this team to stop here. I want to keep going. We have proven that you can get hot and overcome a lot of big odds.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 As the Boston Red Sox celebrated an improbable postseason berth at Tropicana Field,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[12202,12204,12201,2205,12203,110,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-409232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-around-maine","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-around-maine-more-maine-news","tag-associated-press","tag-maine","tag-sports","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}