Badin vs. Versailles
Law Enforcement Memorial Day
American Idol 2012 finale
Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > October > 14
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tampa Bay - no ghosts on this roster
Are you believers yet in the Tampa Bay mystique? I am.
Hey, like everybody else, I was a guy who made fun of the Tampa Bay Rays, right up through last year when they were the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and I called them the Tampa Bay Deviled Eggs.
I mean, why not? This team finished last so often in the American League East that when they decided to eliminate ‘Devil’ from their nickname I thought they might rename them the Tampa Bay Last Placers.
Now they are on the precipice of playing in the World Series, one victory away, one victory over the Boston Red Sox, who are now the Boston Red because the Rays have knocked their Sox off.
Since getting shut out in Game One, the Rays have won three straight, outscoring the Bosox 31-13, getting 39 hits in those three games. They’ve beaten Boston 9-1 and 13-4 in Fenway Park. Talk about a Boston Massacre.
A little bit of history as I remember it.
Tampa Bay begged for a franchise in the late 1980s and 1990s and other franchises played them like an old fiddle.
First it was Seattle. Owner Jeff Smulyan negotiated for at least two years to move his franchise to Tampa Bay. Didn’t happen. He sold out to a Japanese group and the Mariners stayed in Seattle.
The San Francisco Giants wanted out of Candelstick Park, wanted to move from one Bay to another Bay. It was so cold at night in Candlestick in mid-summer that fans who stayed for an entire game were awarded medals of honor. True story.
Well, when it seemed the Giants might move to Tampa Bay, they got themselves that beautiful new park downtown, one of baseball’s best venues. And they stayed, Tampa Bay lost again.
Then it was the Chicago White Sox, talking to Tampa Bay about shifting the White Sox to Florida. Then the White Sox got a new stadium and Tampa Bay was left holding an empty stadium again.
An empty stadium?
Oh, yeah. Tampa Bay took the attitude, “Build it and they will come.” Well, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago showed them they were wrong.
With the strong backing of former St. Petersburg Times columnist Hubert Mizell, they built a stadium in St. Pete, the ugly monster with the lopsided roof that sits just off I275. Heck, they even built the place in the wrong place, on the wrong side of the bay. The population base is in Tampa, but the stadium was built in St. Petersburg.
For years, I made fun of that, too, as the park sat mostly empty except for some tractor pulls, motorcycle races and a year or two as the home to the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning while the Ice Palace was built in Tampa.
As a takeoff on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, I called the Tampa Bay park the Hubert Mizell Emptydome.
Finally, baseball gave Tampa Bay an expansion franchise and they immediately established squatter’s rights on last place. Fans didn’t come. Would you? To watch a last place team every year?
The only time they drew more than 10,000 fans was when the Red Sox or Yankees were in town and the transplanted snowbirds from New England and the east coast showed up to cheer for Boston and New York.
Sort of like how Cubs fans outnumber Reds fans in Great American Ball Park.
Three years ago, the Reds played in Tampa Bay, a three-game interleague series. The only thing the Reds worried about was that their hotel a few blocks from the ball park, The Vinoy, supposedly is haunted. Pitcher Scott Williamson swears he woke up and saw a ghost standing at the end of his bed - but some folks thought he was dreaming about opposing hitters who knocked him around.
It changed this year as the Rays emerged as an outstanding team. No more last. No more Deviled Eggs. No more fans from New England and the east coast outnumbering Rays fans.
All this is another reason I’m a Rays fan this postseason. Their fans were teased and taunted for years, ready to accept the Mariners, ready to accept the Giants, ready to accept the White Sox, only to have it yanked from their grasp at the last moment.
Now I get a kick out of watching noted Red Sox fan\author Stephen King sitting in Fenway watching his team get their pants jerked down around their ankles. No doubt there will be a black-hearted novel come out of this.
Did you see pitcher Edwin Jackson, a 14-game winner this year who is now relegated to the bullpen, finish Tuesday night’s game.
He almost was a Red. A few years ago, when he was the No. 1 prospect for the LA Dodgers, the Reds and LA nearly made a trade. The Dodgers wanted Adam Dunn. The Reds wanted Edwin Jackson. The Dodgers said no.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Post your comment |
Tweet
