The New York Yankees may not be in the post-season for the first time in 13 years, but it seems the Bronx Bombers are taking some of the credit for the Tampa Bay Rays being there.

Who knew that back in spring training that when a Rays fringe player named Eliot Johnson crashed into a Yankee minor league catcher named Francisco Cervelli, infuriating Joe Girardi in the process, the AL East's perennial losers were sending a message that would resonate all the way to October?

Or as Johnny Gomes put it Tuesday: "It's one thing to send a message. It's another to back it up. I think that's what this organization, behind Joe Maddon, did this year. We backed it up. We rallied together and let people know that's how we were going to play. We played that way to the end and we're still playing that way."

You remember Gomes. He hasn't had much of a role in October, bumped off the postseason roster by the return of Rocco Baldelli, but it was Gomes who a few days later came flying in from right field to fight with Shelley Duncan. Duncan had taken it upon himself to retaliate for the Johnson slide by going into Akinori Iwamura at second base with his spikes high.

All these months later, Gomes thinks it was important for the Rays to establish the new, you-can't-push-us-around mentality against the Yankees that Maddon was preaching to a team loaded with young talent that also had a history of losing.

"Since I've been here that organization has been taking our lunch money," Gomes said of the Yankees, "on the field, off the field, spring training, everything. It took a little push to change things. I don't think that had to happen for us to start winning. We were just approaching spring training like it was the regular season, and we won the most games in the Grapefruit League because of it, and that carried over.''

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