The lowly Rays, doormat of major league baseball for ten years, have come up a big-time winner this year. They will become the Boys of October when the regular season ends, entering the American League divison championship games against the White Sox, with the winner playing the Red Sox or the Angels. Over in the National League, the championship games will probably be Cubs versus the Phillies. This is exciting stuff! I haven't really cared about a baseball team since high school, although I was becoming a Red Sox fan until this year. It is hard to avoid becoming an avid fan of your hometown team.
A couple of minor points that even professional sports writers still can't keep straight: (1) It is no longer the Devil Rays, just the Tampa Bay Rays. And,
(2) It is not the Tampa Rays, the Tampa franchise, or the Tampa team. They are not in Tampa Bay, either. Tampa Bay is a large body of water separating Tampa from St. Petersburg, home of the Rays. Tampa has the Bucs and the Lightning, and used to have the Rowdies. Tampa is also home of the University of South Florida although we are actually in central Florida.
No, to see the Rays you come to Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg. They play under a big dome, which some people don't like, but they have a huge winning record at home and they never get a rain delay.
Right now, even as we speak, the Rays are winning in Baltimore in typical Rays fashion: Two out in the top of the 8th, and they scored four runs to go ahead of the Orioles by two. Joe Maddon has taken a bunch of unknowns, second choices, kids fresh out of college, kids fresh up from the minors, and a few veterans, and they have blended into a team that wins even with key players on the disabled list. It almost doesn't matter who's sitting on the bench or which positions the guys in the field are playing. They believe in each other and they back each other up.
I made this prediction on this blog on May 28: The World Series will be the Cubs versus the Rays. That sounded good on May 28 and it sounds even more likely now.
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