ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ Wearing a No. 45 Rays home jersey, Buccaneers first-round draftee Devin White took the Tropicana Field mound for Thursday evening's ceremonial first pitch and tossed a feeble one-hopper to home plate.
Then things really got ugly.
Before they got bizarre.
Five days after his 110-pitch jewel at Boston, Rays left-hander Ryan Yarbrough could provide no luster ? and few strikes ? in a ghastly first inning against the Angels before 15,291 at Tropicana Field.
It sparked a 5-3 Angels triumph that extended Tampa Bay's losing streak to three games, one shy of its season-longest.
By the inning's merciful end, Yarbrough had thrown 32 pitches, 18 of them balls. On his fourth pitch, he surrendered a double to leadoff batter Tommy Estrella. On his seventh, he hit Mike Trout.
On his 10th, he issued a three-run home run to 24-year-old two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani, who later became the first Japanese-born player in major league history to hit for the cycle (the eighth cycle in Angels history).
But in accordance with Thursday's wacky proceedings, Yarbrough followed his unsightly first inning by resembling the rangy lefty who retired 12 consecutive batters at Fenway Park on Saturday. By any measure, from the second inning (when he needed only seven pitches) through the fourth, Yarbrough was lights-out.
Then, lights out.
With Tampa Bay trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the fourth, the dome momentarily went completely dark during an outage affecting most of downtown St. Petersburg, causing a 36-minute delay.
A weather-related incident took place at an electrical substation at Second Avenue North and 16th Street North, according to police.
It was the second such delay the Rays had experienced at home in a month; a 43-minute outage halted play in the ninth inning of the Rays' May 23 loss to the Yankees.
Yarbrough returned after the lengthy halt, but couldn't re-summon the momentum he had built after the first. A two-out triple by Ohtani in the fifth was followed by Albert Pujols' 645th career homer, a two-run shot to left that gave the Angels a 5-0 lead.
The Rays responded with a three-run fifth, highlighted by Tommy Pham's two-out, two-run single to center off Angels starter Tyler Skaggs.
They could muster no more after that, but Ohtani did, capping his historic night with a seventh-inning single off Hunter Wood. He became the third player ever to hit for the cycle at Tropicana Field, joining B.J. Upton (2009) and Detroit's Carlos Guillen ('06).
