Imagine.
It’s now October. The autumnal equinox has come and gone. Columbus Day approaches. A quarter of the Buccaneers’ regular season is already over.
And the Rays are still playing baseball.
Not the old, bedeviled Rays or the Martha Rays or the Bob and Rays. Not the team/franchise that was synonymous with “loser.” Not the late-night-comedian punch line for incompetence and futility.
But the reincarnated, worst-to-first, sun-dappled Tampa Bay Rays.
However this all plays out, it’s still one of the best national sports stories in years.
Major League Baseball, which still doesn’t have a salary cap, relegates low-budget, smaller-market franchises such as Tampa Bay to a subordinate status with a zero-sum mandate: Be smarter and work harder than your deeper-pocketed competition or fail. Ask Kansas City or Pittsburgh. Over-achieve or be undermined by a system that, for example, permits one team, the New York Yankees, to have a payroll ($209 million) five times that of the Rays ($43 million).
To their considerable credit, the Rays, under the leadership of owner Stu Sternberg and his front office, gee-whiz kids — especially Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman — have done just that. Their mantra: Target needs; find value in the marketplace – such that it obviates the need for super-pricey free agents – and draft intelligently (to build the organization from within).
In other words, no more Wilson Alvarezes, Vinny Castillas, Greg Vaughns and Dewon Brazeltons. But more Carlos Penas, Cliff Floyds, Grant Balfours, Eric Hinskes, Evan Longorias and David Prices. Then lock in the better younger players – the foundation and future – to long-term contracts. Small-market teams can’t afford big pay-out busts.
And choose wisely as to who will do the managing. It does no good to recycle the usual suspects. Including, obviously, Lou Piniella. They chose Joe Maddon because they wanted smart, fair, instructive, positive, contemporary, avuncular and classy. Thank you, Los Angeles Angels and Central Casting.
And character counts. When Friedman & Company found themselves saddled with the inherited, talented morale cancer that was Delmon Young, and the societal predator that was Elijah Dukes, they got rid of them. It’s called adding by subtracting, a savvy complement to “buy low and sell high.” In the case of Young, the Rays hit a value bonanza in return: team MVP shortstop Jason Bartlett and starting pitcher Matt Garza. Thanks again, Minnesota Twins.
And nationally, the Rays – with their rags-to-riches-to-Little Engine-That-Could-to-Mohawked-madness storyline – have been the perfect antidote for a sport still reeling from its steroid era. They’ve also given baseball a tutorial on how the little guys can compete and win on an uneven playing field. And they’ve give the Tampa Bay area – and the rest of the country – a welcome respite, frankly, from financial-bailout subplots and presidential-campaign fatigue.
Challenges and Hope
The challenges for the Rays, however, haven’t been limited to salary-cap workarounds and personnel decisions. It’s more daunting than that:
*The Rays play in a substandard facility necessitating catwalk ground rules.
*Geographically and demographically, downtown St. Petersburg – with nothing west but the Gulf of Mexico and the Corpus Christi market – is poorly located for maximum regional appeal.
*Parking is problematic and mass transit non-existent.
*The Tampa Bay area has a dearth of corporate headquarters, a typically key component in critically important, season-ticket scenarios.
*The body of water known as Tampa Bay has often seemed more like a second gulf — separating Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
*Lifestyle-wise, there have been better Tampa Bay options – i.e. tennis, golf,
fishing, boating, heading for the Carolinas – than baseball in the summer.
But as has been well noted across the annals of sports, winning can trump all manner of adversity. Rays’ attendance — although the second highest ever at 1.8 million and up 30.4 percent from 2007 — is still an issue. However, it’s the year following the break-out season that traditionally yields the biggest attendance spike. 2009 will be pivotal.
Moreover, the Rays have enjoyed a season-long surge in television ratings. In fact, the playoff-clinching win over Minnesota at the Trop drew better TV numbers than the Florida-Tennessee telecast from Knoxville. Then there’s Rays’ merchandise sales: up more than 100 percent.
And whoever, candidly, thought there would be a “Go Rays, Tampa Believes” banner adorning a side of the Tampa Municipal Office Building? Or an official “Tampa Bay Rays Day” in Tampa? Or a giant-screened showing of a Rays (Detroit Tigers) game in Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park? Or a Rays-honoring “Party in the Park” in downtown’s Lykes Gaslight Park?
The Rays have shocked baseball by their unprecedented, regular-season achievement and even bridged the bay of chronic parochialism.
Why stop believing now?