Here's one for your next game of Kings: Never have I ever met a Rays fan. And no, the vast majority of the 41,000 that filed into Tropicana Field Sunday night for Game 7 against Boston don't count (especially when you consider most of them probably discovered just this year that there was a professional baseball team in town). No, I mean to say that I have truthfully never met a Rays fan. I've met Royals, Giants, Rangers, Pirates, and even Nationals supporters for crying out loud. But never have I ever met someone who lived and died by Tampa Bay baseball.
But this fan?T. B. Ray we'll call him?has to exist, right? I mean, the franchise has been around for a decade, having joined as an expansion team in 1998 along with the Diamondbacks?who have since developed a robust fan base in Phoenix?so there was more than enough time. But did they? I mean, did Mr. Ray ever actually take the time to do so?
In all honesty, why would he? In their 10 years of existence the Rays were 645-972, their highest win total being just 70 in 2004, not to mention the fact that they were nearly contracted five years ago, all this under the umbrella of the corny ferocity of their conspicuously tide-dyed mascot, the Devil Ray, which looked more like the Ocean Spray logo. Year after year, failure after failure, the Trop began to feel more like a contaminated retirement facility than an ugly stadium home to a despicable baseball team.
Throughout history every franchise experiences its dry spells. But no team in the history of professional baseball has ever gone winless in every...single...year...of their existence. That is, however, with the exception of Tampa Bay. At the time of Tampa's introduction, the only other team in all of Florida?the Marlins?had just captured their first World Series in only their fifth year in the league. So why would a Floridian baseball fan have any kind of rhyme or reason to change allegiances?
They wouldn't, which explains why the Trop was almost always empty. The Devil Rays were the laughing stock of baseball, and their biggest fan was nowhere to be found.
But then something happened?several things actually, but one in particular that got the ball rolling. Through a sick, twisted, and seemingly delusional trade, the New York Mets acquiesced (somehow) to the shipping of their top pitching prospect Scott Kazmir to the D-Rays for the injury-prone Victor Zambrano, on a hunch that pitching coach Rick Peterson would be able to fix the erratic right-hander. Let's just say that things didn't exactly work out for the Mets (Kazmir has 47 wins since the swap to Zambrano's 10-45 for his career). But it did for Tampa, who finally had a young, driven southpaw to build on. It was GM Chuck LaMar who pulled the trigger on the deal, but even my old guinea pig Cedric would have had the brains to do so. LaMar was fired in 2005 after calling the shots for eight seasons in which the D-Rays went 518-777, and was replaced by Andrew Friedman?we'll call him the catalyst...and the genius.
Friedman probably knew he had his work cut out for him. Having finished last in the AL East every year but one (2004?4th), and with the Yankees and Red Sox having established themselves long ago as division bullies, Friedman's job was nearly impossible: Make the Devil Rays relevant, for the first time ever.
For a couple of years Friedman did what he could, and chipped away at what he hoped would eventually become a Michelangelo-like sculpture. He first took a gamble and hired Joe Maddon as manager, who had never finished higher than fourth in two years experience in charge of the Angels. He imported infielder Akinori Iwamura from Japan when nobody else wanted him, and signed the faltering Carlos Peña for the same reason. He also acquired All-Star catcher Dioner Navarro from the Dodgers for throwaways Toby Hall and Mark Hendrickson, and was patient with the truculent B.J. Upton. But perhaps most importantly, he kept long-time employee Carl Crawford instead of trading away arguably the game's fastest player for unproven prospects. But those moves still yielded the same results, as Tampa finished fifth in 2006 and again in 2007.
But finally (and this time I mean it), the Devil Rays thought outside the box, and going beyond roster moves and coaching personnel, utilized a tactic that has had immediate impacts on teams over the years from the Tennessee Titans to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: They changed their team name...and their uniforms. No longer would the "Devil" be associated with the baseball franchise in Tampa Bay, nor would the repulsive shade of seaweed green that had plagued them for the last decade. And suddenly, just like after a good catharsis, the Tampa Bay Rays stepped into the spotlight, white and navy blue, anew. But there was still work to be done.
Friedman brought on declining veterans Eric Hinske and Cliff Floyd, and dealt Delmon Young to the Twins in exchange for Matt Garza?excuse me, the 2008 ALCS MVP. And then, it just clicked. The Rays got off to a hot start and never looked back, going 97-65?worst to first?capturing their first winning season, first division title, first trip to the postseason, first trip to the ALCS, and first trip to the World Series, after defeating the Red Sox in the most hard-fought series victory in baseball history. I'll say it again: the most hard-fought series in baseball history. Sure, you can give me the 2004 ALCS won by the Red Sox against the Yankees, but I'll give you New York's rancid pitching staff that season. Or you could give me the 2003 NLCS won by the Marlins over the Cubs, and I'll give you...the Cubs.
When you consider the inexperience of this club, and the novelty and sheer inconceivability of their presence in the Championship Series, combined with their two thumpings of Boston at Fenway, only to cough up one of the worst blown leads in playoff history against the new Yankees (as I like to call them) in Game 5 and then lose again in Game 6, only to stand pat after conceding an early home run, and rally behind a brilliant pitching performance by Garza, to knock off a team that had won nine consecutive games when facing elimination coming into the decisive Game 7, even if you refuse to call it the most hard-fought series victory in baseball history, then you must at least call it the most significant series victory in baseball history.
The victory puts to bed this notion that bad teams can't suddenly get good, and eradicates every excuse that a losing team might protest including not having sufficient funds to produce a winning franchise, as well as the other teams in the division being too powerful to surmount. But most importantly, it gives each and every team in Major League Baseball?winners and losers?hope: It could get better. It can get better. It will get better. And because he deserves this the most, surely, wherever he is, T.B. Ray is smiling.