Navarro after hitting the go-ahead double at Fenway.

The Rays came up three wins short of bringing home the World Series title in 2008, but the year will go down as one of the most memorable in the history of baseball, right up there with the 1955 Dodgers, the 1969 Mets, and the 2004 Red Sox. In a year this magical, there were surely many candidates for Game of the Year, but I am pinning myself down and picking just one.

On September 9, 2008 I was vacationing in New England and happened to be visiting with a couple of friends in Woburn, Mass. I was squarely in the heart of enemy territory on that night. Little did I know we would wind up watching the Rays’ Game of the Year at a little Mexican place I believe was called Ixtapa in "downtown" Woburn. A little over 13 miles away, the Rays and Red Sox were locked in a tight, intense September battle at Fenway Park.

The first six innings were a typical Kazmir vs. Dice-K struggle, the Rays emerging with a slim 3-2 lead thanks to Jason Bartlett’s fourth-inning double. The Rays were set up for the Balfour-Wheeler-Percival combo to come in for the final three innings, but things never seem to go exactly as planned against the Red Sox.

As my two friends – who were both Red Sox fans – and I were finishing up our quesadillas and Dos Equis, Balfour cruised through the seventh and Wheeler was an out away from getting out of the eighth.

Maybe I have a selective memory, but it seems to me that whenever a Rays’ pitcher walks someone in the middle of the Boston lineup, the next batter always goes yard. Wheeler issued the two-out walk to Youkilis that night and sure enough, Jason Bay put the Red Sox ahead 4-3 with a two-run homer over the Monster.

As I hung my head, Bay’s homer set off a scene of premature euphoric gloating that only Red Sox fans are capable of. Even Raul (okay, I made that name up) took a break from closing down the restaurant to engage in some celebration. I can’t say that I blamed them though, because even I knew that Jonathan Papelbon was about to come out for the ninth at Fenway and in all likelihood close the door on the Rays and put the Red Sox in first place in the American League East race. As far as Red Sox fans were concerned, they had already taken their rightful place atop the division and put the pretending Rays in their rearview mirror permanently.

It was a scene eerily reminiscent of the Death Star battle. Hold on, don’t go anywhere. It will make sense when I’m done. Fenway Park is the Death Star, the Red Sox are the Empire/Vader, and the Rays are the Rebels/Luke. So the Rebels have launched an attack on the Death Star and the Empire is about to snuff out the attack as Vader has Luke in his sights. Then some guy that pretty much just joined up with the Rebels that day comes out of nowhere at the last second and saves the day, enabling Luke to blow up the Death Star.

Congratulations, Dan Johnson – you just became Han Solo!

Just brought up to the Rays that very day, Dan Johnson didn’t even get to Fenway in time to start the game. Joe Maddon worked his magic yet again though, inserting Johnson as a pinch-hitter to lead off the ninth against Papelbon. Johnson responded with the game-tying home run to silence all of New England on that September night and send Darth Vader into a dizzy whirling dervish off into the deep reaches of space.

After Fernando Perez and Dioner Navarro hit back-to-back, one-out doubles to give the Rays the lead, Raul’s mood started to turn sour as the rest of the patrons filed out and the place began to close.

My friends were die-hards though, and I surely was not going anywhere so we stayed and watched the bottom of the ninth. Percival came in to close it out and gave up what looked for a second like a possible walk-off, two-run homer to David Ortiz, but it ended up being a routine fly-out to right field. So as Percival got Coco to pop out to end the game, Raul was really giving us the look of death, so we got the hell out of there.

There were many other candidates for game of the year, but to me this was the winner because not only was it an unbelievably dramatic and exciting game, but it proved that the Rays were more than just a home-field wonder and could take their magic into the lion’s den and emerge at full strength.

As for Dan Johnson, the Han Solo analogy pretty much ended that night, as today the Rays’ sold him to Yokohama of the Japanese League.