Story of the Year

The Major League Baseball postseason is now under way and there have already been some surprising. The Cub fans can tell people all about that. Barring a miracle by that North Side team, the best story in all of sports for this year has already been written. In 2007, The Tampa Bay Devil Rays finished with a 66-96 record making them the worst team in baseball. In 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays went 97-65 and won the toughest division in all of sports. In this day and age, the idea of a team other than the Yankees or Red Sox prevailing in the AL East seems almost unfathomable. Either New York or Boston had won every division title since 1997. It’s amazing what a little name change can do for a franchise. The Rays dropped the Devil and became baseball’s darlings. The prognosticators continued to doubt them waiting for manager Joe Madden’s young upstarts to fold. Only the Rays never did.

It had become almost a foregone conclusion that nobody in the AL East could compete the big market Yankees and Red Sox and their huge payrolls. The longest of long shots, the Rays had been a perennial piñata for the rest of league. What nobody noticed the last few years was that Tampa Bay was quietly rebuilding the franchise. It started three years ago with new ownership and management determined to change a losing climate. It continued with hiring Joe Madden as manager and spreading his play the game the right way approach throughout the organization. Most importantly, the Rays started to stock piling young talent. Baseball fans will be hearing the names Kazmir, Shields, Upton, Crawford, Garza, and Longoria for years to come.

If teams like the Marlins and Rockies haven’t already proved it, the days of spending big bucks on super star players in order to win are over. It just doesn’t work that way anymore. Teams must be able to build from within. Franchises from Pittsburgh to Kansas City to San Francisco have hope and more franchise will begin to follow the Tampa Bay blueprint. That blueprint involves speed, strong pitching, good defense, playing hard, and the concept of team. The Rays performance this season was no fluke and could very well end with a World Series championship this year. Baseball fans should be paying attention. The Rays’ division title was no small feat and it is only the start of things to come. Baseball’s next dynasty resides in Tampa Bay.