VanDamage

I was at the game tonight - here is what happened, as far as what I noticed. A stray, rather mangy-looking black cat was wandering around on the batter's eye turf earlier in the game when the Rays scored. Bad luck, naturally. But then the same cat returned in the 9th inning (I believe shortly before the Halos came up - at least that's when I noticed it again, and I suppose it could have reappeared earlier). Anyway, the camera guys began showing the cat on the jumbotron, including the center field camera which had zoomed in on the cat's face at some point. The video folks at the stadium apparently recorded that video and put moving images (zoom in/out, head turn, etc) of the cat's face on the jumbotron during the 9th inning rally. Then, during the pitching change before Trout came up, they inserted those moving images into the Rally Monkey video (Pirates of the Caribbean version), obviously trying to lay the groundwork for "The Rally Cat". Trout hit the walk off bomb, and the cat's face was fixed to all screens in the stadium with the "Drive Home Safely" message. There was certainly a feeling in the relatively sparse crowd (and perhaps the players) that we had something new going on.