Jeremy runs down his trip to Tampa to see the Rays in action.
I think I may have found something that the Devil Rays lead the league in - scantily clad women.

Now, I would imagine that there are very few fantasy leagues out there with SCW as one of the categories - although I would love to see Bill James take that one on. One would only imagine the formula - Cup Size+Leg length-Clothing Amount/Amount of Fantasy Players Dated.

Anyway, as part of the Annual Baseball Trip tradition among my friends and I, we ventured forth this year into the land of .400 baseball, the site of countless blown saves, the Home of Greg Norton…Tampa Bay. It is now official, I have seen games in all American League East ballparks and once again, Tampa comes in last as far as facilities go, but to be honest, it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

To describe the experience a bit, let me run through some key parts:

1 - I flew from New York, and my traveling buddies came from Pittsburgh and Baltimore. We probably spent a combined $600 or so on plane tickets to get there, never mind the cost of hotel, rental car, food, beer, and other entertainment. All this said - we got on the plane without purchasing a single ticket for the actual baseball game. Why? Because they probably would have had to be giving away bench jobs to the first people in the stadium for there to have been a rush to acquire tickets.

Needless to say, we didn’t anticipate a Saturday night Cleveland-Tampa Bay matchup featuring Jake Westbrook vs. Jason Hammel as being a big e-ticket in the state of Florida! We were not wrong. For $22 per ticket, we got third row from the field along the right field line. We could basically see the imperfections in Joe Borowski’s skin from where we were sitting.

2 - Related to the availability of tickets, the Rays’ management is doing their best to get people to the stadium - by giving tons of crap away! Upon entry to the stadium, we added to our collection a poster of Jamie Shields and a Rocco Baldelli bobblehead doll (Dwight Schrute would be proud). We were also informed by a handy dandy television monitor that Shields will be signing autographs for 45 minutes. We get on that line until we realize that we will never get to him in time.

We are then informed by the two attractive women standing in front of us wearing identical outfits and white go-go boots that there was another line for autographs that they were going to. It turns out that they were on the wrong line because they actually intended to get the autograph of the other guy…Gary Glover. That’s right. Journeyman reliever Gary Glover has a fan club apparently - an attractive fan club! So we get on that line and I have Glover sign my ticket. My buddy gets him to sign his baseball glove - get it, glove. Glover. Get it? Sigh.

3 - Wait!! That’s not all the stuff. In addition to having one-fifth of the pitching staff signing autographs, the Rays have a special guest signing at another part of the stadium. You see, it wasn’t just Jamie Shields Poster Night and Rocco Baldelli Bobblehead Night. It was also 70s Disco Night. There was a costume contest. There was disco music playing all evening long. And there was Barry Williams signing autographs outside the Ted Williams Museum. Yes, Barry and Ted. Two icons of baseball. Johnny Bravo himself signing autographs.

Of course, we got on that line. I took a camera phone photo and sent it to my wife. There are fewer icons of pop culture cooler than the Bradys. Fonzie. Archie Bunker. Sam Malone. JR Ewing. Cosmo Kramer. Tony Soprano. It’s hard to add to that list. Throw in the video introduction of the starting lineups with all of the Indians and Rays dressed like Huggy Bear and Tony Manero and it was pure gold. Solid Gold.

4 - Wait!!! More crap!!! As per my tradition, I get a hot dog in every park. My buddies go on a run for food as I watch the Diamond Vision (or whatever it is called) and see an ad for the Sting Em Rays Dog - a hot dog with chili and melted cheddar cheese. Mmmmm….fattening. Of course, they don’t see this ad and come back with a plain dog that my buddy seemed to have completely dipped in mustard. Seriously, it was everywhere. It almost got on my Scott Kazmir shirt (no, it wasn’t also Scott Kazmir Shirt Day - I actually bought that one). So I inhale that dog and get up to get my second delicious snack. When i order the dog, I get a box with it. What’s in the box? A cowbell!! That’s right. I got a fever, and the only prescription….is MORE COWBELL!! Seriously, I made that joke about 10 times that night. Somewhere Chris Walken’s ears were ringing. Perhaps from MORE COWBELL!! (if you have not seen that SNL sketch, then you may not be allowed to read this column).

5 - The Rays have a cartoon anthology series featuring Joe Maddon, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli and Scott Kazmir. In the episode that we saw, giant robots or something are attacking the stadium. Maddon freezes time and shows the three players a secret society created to protect baseball. There is one protector that has the powers handed down to him from past generations - from Honus Wagner to the Babe to Jackie Robinson, etc. The current protector is Don Zimmer and he gives the three guys super powers to protect baseball. There must be an episode every night - sort of like the Clone Wars cartoon on Cartoon Network, but with 70s style animation and more Baldelli and less Mace Windu.

6 - Here is the best part…the Rays have cheerleaders. They come out and dance on the dugouts and join the stadium MC for his interactions with the crowd. Whatever. A baseball team, a Major League team, has cheerleaders. Have I just not gone to the right stadiums? I have never seen this before. Not that I am complaining - far from it. It doesn’t surprise me from a city with a strip club and porn shop seemingly on every street, but still. The next step to get people in the stands is to essentially give away money. Or perhaps provide a lap dance for the box seats.

By the way, the Indians kicked their butts. Hammel was hammered. We got to see the first ever homer for Asdrubal Cabrera - that was cool. The fans were nice - although we were surrounded by Indians’ fans, so a little shame on the Rays’ fans for that. Although, I thought it was a myth that there were actually true Devil Rays fans. But there were. And God bless them. I could only imagine life as a Rays fan - Lord, beer me strength. (another Office joke - if you aren’t watching that show, what are you waiting for, a written invitation?) I especially loved the loud 10-year-old kid near us that shouted with glass-shattering volume (AKI!!!!!) every time Iwamura moved, and (CC!!!!!!!!!) for Crawford. I expected Sabathia to turn around every time he did that.

All in all, a nice game in a nice park with weird things going on and a very bad team on the field. Next year it will be the new DC park - which HAS to be better than RFK - and perhaps Cincinnati. But it will be hard to match the craziness and tackiness of Tampa - we had a ball Tampa, keep those cheerleaders and cartoons and free crap coming!

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