WOTD: Rays
Today's word of the day is Rays (Team motto: "Devil-free since 2007!")
Major League Baseball's World Series started last night in Tampa Bay. Yes, that's right, Tampa Bay. When my Boston Red Sox lost the American League Championship Series to the Tampa Bay Rays, I lost a bet to gneri, which obligates me to write this entry as a tribute to our new chief rivals in the AL East, the mighty, mighty Rays.
Red Sox and Yankees fans have been watching the Rays all season, waiting for a collapse that never came. Instead, the Red Sox had to settle for a wildcard berth while the Yankees are spending this postseason playing golf (except for Derek Jeter, who inexplicably still gets work in postseason commercials despite the Yankees being zero-for-the-millenium in World Series wins).
I spent much of the summer in New York City, where fans seemed particularly demoralized by having their team in third or fourth place for most of the season. Folks I talked to claimed to be Mets fans, and wouldn't admit to having ever followed the Yankees. This offseason, Yankee Stadium (aka "The House that Ruth Built") is being imploded to make way for a new ballpark with, notably, fewer seats.
Back in Boston last month, when the penant race had officially come down to just the Sox and Rays, I saw a car with a Yankees logo on it. In previous years, that would have caused a rancor. People would have hounded that car's owner out of the state with pitchforks and burning torches. But this year, Bostonians just walked past, shaking their heads sadly. "A Yankees fan? Aww, poor thing..."
Not that the Yankees are going away, but it really does feel like the Rays have replaced them as our new chief rivals. The Rays are for real, they have a good chance against the Phillies in the World Series, and they're positioned to stay in contention for years to come. They can hit for power. They can pitch, despite the lack of a dedicated closer. They can field without letting up too many spectacular errors. They can win close one-run games in 11 innings. They can win in a 13-4 blowout. And they can win the seventh game in a seven-game series, which says a lot about playing under pressure.
The one thing the Rays lack is history. I was talking to my mother the other day, trying to figure out whether her grandfather had been an Americans/Red Sox fan. She didn't know for sure, because she never got to meet him, but living in the Boston area around the turn of the 20th Century, the odds were pretty good. Boston's other professional baseball team, who now play in Georgia as the Atlanta Braves, lost many of their best players and much of their fanbase when Boston's American League franchise formed in 1901. So I consider myself to be a fourth-generation Red Sox fan, and we're raising our daughter to be a fifth-generation Red Sox fan. The Tampa Bay Rays, formed in 1998, don't have any fifth-generation fans unless they happen to be fruitflies.
But my Grandpa Max (second generation Red Sox fan) would have loved the Rays. He's the one who taught me to always root for the underdog, the team who fought their way up from the cellar and won against all odds. For most of his life, the Red Sox were that team. He didn't live to see them win their first World Series in 86 years, in 2004, but he never stopped rooting for them. Against any other team than the Red Sox, Grandpa Max would have been all about the Rays.
My wife's family are Phillies fans, so I've got to root with them, but I'll also be hoping that the Rays will continue to be a formidable foe in a post-Yankees era. And I can hardly wait for our rematch next year!
Major League Baseball's World Series started last night in Tampa Bay. Yes, that's right, Tampa Bay. When my Boston Red Sox lost the American League Championship Series to the Tampa Bay Rays, I lost a bet to gneri, which obligates me to write this entry as a tribute to our new chief rivals in the AL East, the mighty, mighty Rays.
Red Sox and Yankees fans have been watching the Rays all season, waiting for a collapse that never came. Instead, the Red Sox had to settle for a wildcard berth while the Yankees are spending this postseason playing golf (except for Derek Jeter, who inexplicably still gets work in postseason commercials despite the Yankees being zero-for-the-millenium in World Series wins).
I spent much of the summer in New York City, where fans seemed particularly demoralized by having their team in third or fourth place for most of the season. Folks I talked to claimed to be Mets fans, and wouldn't admit to having ever followed the Yankees. This offseason, Yankee Stadium (aka "The House that Ruth Built") is being imploded to make way for a new ballpark with, notably, fewer seats.
Back in Boston last month, when the penant race had officially come down to just the Sox and Rays, I saw a car with a Yankees logo on it. In previous years, that would have caused a rancor. People would have hounded that car's owner out of the state with pitchforks and burning torches. But this year, Bostonians just walked past, shaking their heads sadly. "A Yankees fan? Aww, poor thing..."
Not that the Yankees are going away, but it really does feel like the Rays have replaced them as our new chief rivals. The Rays are for real, they have a good chance against the Phillies in the World Series, and they're positioned to stay in contention for years to come. They can hit for power. They can pitch, despite the lack of a dedicated closer. They can field without letting up too many spectacular errors. They can win close one-run games in 11 innings. They can win in a 13-4 blowout. And they can win the seventh game in a seven-game series, which says a lot about playing under pressure.
The one thing the Rays lack is history. I was talking to my mother the other day, trying to figure out whether her grandfather had been an Americans/Red Sox fan. She didn't know for sure, because she never got to meet him, but living in the Boston area around the turn of the 20th Century, the odds were pretty good. Boston's other professional baseball team, who now play in Georgia as the Atlanta Braves, lost many of their best players and much of their fanbase when Boston's American League franchise formed in 1901. So I consider myself to be a fourth-generation Red Sox fan, and we're raising our daughter to be a fifth-generation Red Sox fan. The Tampa Bay Rays, formed in 1998, don't have any fifth-generation fans unless they happen to be fruitflies.
But my Grandpa Max (second generation Red Sox fan) would have loved the Rays. He's the one who taught me to always root for the underdog, the team who fought their way up from the cellar and won against all odds. For most of his life, the Red Sox were that team. He didn't live to see them win their first World Series in 86 years, in 2004, but he never stopped rooting for them. Against any other team than the Red Sox, Grandpa Max would have been all about the Rays.
My wife's family are Phillies fans, so I've got to root with them, but I'll also be hoping that the Rays will continue to be a formidable foe in a post-Yankees era. And I can hardly wait for our rematch next year!