Oct. 7 Joe Maddon postgame interview

Q. Jose has had a bit of flare for the dramatic during the year.

JOE MADDON:  If he hits a home run right now we don't have enough ice cream to feed the boy.

I swear I was looking down on my card and you're preparing for what's going to happen. Their pitchers are so good. And then I hear that thing you hear on the radio back in the day when you're listening to the Cardinals on KMOX, laying on the floor in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, that knock. And look up and the ball is going towards the tank, which nobody hits home runs there. Nobody does. How about that? It's incredible.

Jose does have a flare for the dramatic. He's done that a couple of times now. A walk‑off triple, two walk‑off homers. It's incredible what he's done. What an interesting, wonderful game to stay solvent with.

Q. Longoria, that homer changed the game?

JOE MADDON:  Of course it did. Buchholz is pitching his typical game here. We cannot do anything with him. We get some guys on base, he would make a pitch, and then finally Longo got it, finally Longo got him. And then it ties it up right there and all of a sudden it's a different world.

Truly, Longo has done that in the past. It's something, I don't want to say experiences in baseball, you've come to expect that from him on moments. To sit there, we've been through a lot of stuff around here for the last several years, that ranks right up there with the best stuff, obviously. You can talk about the last game of the season, which has to be in some regards, but look at this whole week working up to today, and then this game is even more dramatic than the other games we had already won. It's really an incredible day for the Rays.

Q. How improbable is it for him hitting it?

JOE MADDON:  All these things, if you want to go on probable, look at the probability of it. If you work out his abilities versus that pitcher's abilities, what's been going on. If you're going to bet some bucks on that, you're going to lose, it's not normally going to happen. He climbed all over that. It was down, but he got the head of the bat on it and the rest is Rays' history. It's really an incredible game to participate in.

Q. Myers is still in the game?

JOE MADDON: Correct. Furthermore, we went National League on him. Once Myers came out we put the DH in the game. And we had to start moving the spot around to prevent the pitcher from having to hit. That was purely all National League right there, that's all that was.

Q. What's Myers' status for tomorrow?

JOE MADDON:  Cramping, Ronnie Porterfield told me it was cramping I think in both legs. With that he should probably be fine by tomorrow, it's kind of a dehydration thing. That's what I got before I came and walked over here.

Q. (INAUDIBLE)?

JOE MADDON:  Listen, I agree. They have been outplaying us all year. They were outplaying us again today. But finally, like I said, Longo kind of was talking about that boulder you have to start pushing in the other direction. I think that was the moment. And then to get back on top and struggle to get back on top as we did, tremendous. Delmon putting the ball down on a great play by Napoli, preventing everybody scoring right there. We needed that moment. It occurred and we can start looking forward to tomorrow.

I really believe Hellickson is ready for this challenge tomorrow. I do. I feel good about it.

Q. (INAUDIBLE).

JOE MADDON:  He's always been pushing our boulders around. Longo has been the boulder pusher around here. Every time things seem bleak offensively he's picked us up. We needed that badly, there's no denying it. Among the group everybody is going to look for that guy to lead you and he did and he put us back in the race.

Q. (INAUDIBLE).

JOE MADDON: I didn't process all of that. There's a lot of stuff going on on that moment. If you walk Pedroia, you have the bases loaded. Carp was going to hit for bear, all of this stuff was nasty stuff. For me it was just not about not losing the lead. At least if it's a tie we've got a shot.

I don't know, he may have, I have to see the video, I don't know that. I honestly don't know that. I don't even know if he had been able to catch the ball had we been on it, it was hit so hard, if he was able to it would be a double play and nothing to worry about. That was a difficult choice right there, but I chose ‑‑ normally we side on the side of aggressiveness or boldness, I thought right there under those circumstances, it was best to concede one run and live for the bottom of the 9th inning.

Q. Did you consider putting anyone else in that slot?

JOE MADDON:  What happened was we went National League. Once Wil went out, we could have popped Sam in that spot. Had we done that, that would have locked Sam in that spot and I didn't want to lock us into one guy. Whenever your DH can play defense, that really permits you to do other things. Sometimes DH's can't play defense. And when they can't play defense, you can't make that particular move. But when you can, it kind of pushes back the next decision regarding who is going to hit where.

For instance with Delmon hitting in the 9 hole, then I can move the catcher into the 4 hole. So again, it's total National League. The interesting part of that game. But we chose to delay the decision by putting the DH in the game and the pitcher in the 4 hole.