No July 4th game, but tonight I would like to declare that, yes, I am a bandwgaon Tampa Bay Rays fan. However, if you watch this team reguarly you'd become a fan as well. They're young, talented, good chemistry and they play hard, something the Mets could really stand to try at some point.
My only previous experience at The Trop came in June 1998 when it was an unquestionable dump and the novelty of baseball being in Tampa was in full effect, not to mention the dfeinition of nosebleed seats. Needless to say, the experience sucked.
I was expecting a real forced atmosphere smilar to say Anaheim or Arizona, but that notion was immediatelty dispelled. Meeting up with a couple of friends before the game at Ferg's, a bar on Central Avenue just across from Tropicana Field, there wasn't anyone without Rays gear and the reaction in the place to the Yanks-Sox game, mostly when Jose Molina took a foul ball off the back of the neck was something can't imagine taking place even last year.
Inside, while some of the uppder deck was taped off, there were few empty seats in the place and the crowd didn't define trendy at all. The best example was in the top of the 8th when Joey "Jumper" Gathright got to 3rd with one out as J.P. Howell struggled to find the strike zone. The entire place stood as Howell recovered to strikeout Mark Grudzielanek and erupted into the bottom of the inning as Alex Gordon went down looking to end the inning, more on him in a second. Watching the Boston series during the week, you could feel the energy of that crowd coming through the TV, but I imagined that it would've dialed since it's the Royals and a series against the defending champs for 1st place is pretty big, but I was quite surprised.
Watching Alex Gordon during the game, you could tell that he's exhausted from trying to live up to the lofty expectations placed on him since the spring of last season. I remember watching Gordon get a standing ovation before his 1st career at-bat on opening day last season and thinking there's no way anyone can live up to that kind of hype and the expectation of saving a franchise as Gordon was proclaimed to do.
Evan Longoria had similar hype among scouts but he was fortunate in that he has several other young stars in the making and already established stars such as Carl Crawford and Scott Kazmir to help ease the burden.
Whether or not the Rays are able to make it to October remains to be seen, but the A.L. East is no longer just the Red Sox, Yankees and a bunch of tomato cans. The Rays are for real and with new ownership that's willing to spend money, they're gonna be here for a while.
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