Jason Bay stood in the visitor's clubhouse in Tropicana Field on Thursday afternoon, approximately 25 miles away from where his season began eight months ago.
But MapQuest be damned - the space between McKechnie Field and the American League Championship Series is wider than just the Sunshine Skyway.
It wasn't long ago that Bay was reporting for spring training in Bradenton as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, wondering when he'd get a chance to experience the playoffs from a vantage point other than his couch.
That all changed July 31, when the Pirates threw him into a pennant race by dealing him to the Boston Red Sox, who open the ALCS tonight against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Bay will be in left field for the Red Sox, with four wins standing between him and a trip to the World Series.
"It's been different," Bay said. "But it's been a pretty seamless transition."
One Bay had been thirsting for. He came to Pittsburgh toward the end of the 2003 season and wound up being named the National League Rookie of the Year in 2004. He averaged more than 28 home runs and 94 RBIs in his first four seasons in Pittsburgh, during which the Pirates never won more than 72 games.
Bay was set to be a piece of the club's 16th straight losing season this summer before he became part of a three-team deal that sent Boston's Manny Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It was a great opportunity that came with a price - replacing Ramirez, one of baseball's greatest run producers who helped carry the Red Sox to a pair of world titles since 2004 and led the Dodgers into this year's National League Championship Series, wasn't going to be easy.
But Bay didn't approach it that way.
"I went over and just did what I could do...If I was an in-house option and I had played with him, that was something I would have had to live up to," Bay said. "But having never played with him, I just took up his spot in left field.
"I was just trying to play baseball."
It worked - Bay got a standing ovation during his first at-bat at Fenway Park and batted .293 with nine home runs and 37 RBIs in 49 games to help the Red Sox win the wild card.
Thus far, he has made the most of his first postseason, batting .412 with two home runs and scoring the game-winning run in Boston's division series win over Anaheim.
"He's been terrific," said Red Sox manager Terry Francona. "Fortunately for him, he hit right away, which made his transition easier. But we just told him just to play. And he's fit in - the players love him, and he's been a big part of our club's success."
Initial reports during the final day of the non-waiver trade deadline had Bay coming to the Rays, who have struggled against left-handed pitching. But he wound up in Boston, much to the delight of designated hitter David Ortiz, the guy in the lineup Bay has been entrusted to protect.
"Jason has been putting it together," Ortiz said. "He's a great player, good hitter, always plays hard - you can't ask for much more than that."
Given that the Rays have come as far as the Red Sox have, Bay wouldn't have fretted had he come to Tampa Bay instead.
But he's in the playoffs, playing in front of rabid home crowds and standing light years away from those seasons in Pittsburgh, which always began in Bradenton and were pretty much over by the All-Star break.
"It's a blast," he said of playing baseball in Boston. "The atmosphere there is second to none. It's easy to play a baseball game there.
"So far, it's been great."
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