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The Tampa Bay Rays win the pennant on my birthday.

It’s 8:22PM right now, and the ALCS game is supposed to have been on since eight o’clock.  But, for some reason, TBS is showing some lame sitcom.  Also, their telephone number is busy.

UPDATE: TBS is now showing a message crawl that says they are experiencing technical difficulties.  Maybe TBS isn’t big league enough to carry a game of this caliber.

The day before my ninth birthday my dad called me into his room and pulled a present out from beneath the mattress.  It was a new Wilson baseball glove with “George Brett” written across the palm.  He was getting a head start on breaking it in for me.  He had some glove conditioner ready to go, and we branded it on the stove, which was our way of distinguishing our equipment from anyone else’s.

I was as enthusiastic about baseball then as I have ever been in my life.  My dad and I played catch every evening until it was too dark to see the ball.  We lived 400 miles from the closest major league baseball team, but I thought about the sport constantly.  I played little league ball in a park right on the shore of Old Tampa Bay, and at night it was refreshing to be by the water.  The park is still there, but the baseball diamond is long gone.  I played several different positions, but I remember being in the outfield mostly.  I usually could make contact with the ball, even if I wasn’t an especially powerful batter.  I remember a kid on my team hit a homerun over the fence once and I was amazed.  It seemed like it went a mile, though I am sure it wasn’t more than 200 feet.

When I was little I did manage to see a few major league games at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta.  I distinctly remember seeing the Cubs vs. Braves ca. 1985.  And I got to see lots of spring training and minor league games close to home.  My dad would get us box seats, and we’d watch the Reds at Al Lopez Field in Tampa (here’s a neat film of that park from 1984); the Phillies at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater; the Blue Jays at Grant Field in Dunedin; and, best of all, the Cardinals at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg.  It wasn’t expensive, and you could get close to the action.  Plus, since the crowds were sparser, you could sometimes snag a foul ball that landed in your vicinity.

When I was young I didn’t have much hope that a major league team would move to our area for regular season play.  Every few years there would be talk that an existing team would move to St. Petersburg or Tampa, but the truth was that these teams were really just using us to get leverage in their home towns to get new stadiums.  Then, in the late 1980s, St. Pete, against the advice of MLB, built a dome.  I remember going on opening day, March 3, 1990, when it was called the Florida Suncoast Dome.  There was then no indication that baseball would come to town.  It took eight years before the Devil Rays took the field.  Even then, the dome required extensive renovations.  I remember there being a good deal of outrage that a park built for baseball was so unsuited for the sport.  It was very poorly designed. But I have been to several games at what is now called Tropicana Field, and though the building is soulless–like a giant warehouse–it’s comfortable and clean.  Wrigley Field is magical, but it’s small and you are really crowded in there.  When somebody in your row needs to get out you have to stand up. That happens every minute and a half. And The Trop is a good value.  When I went last season, tickets were $5 and parking was free.  You were even allowed to bring certain outside food, though I opted for the concession stand.  It was just depressing to see such small crowds.

But now we are in a new age.  Tonight the Rays will face the Red Sox for the American League title.  I am nervous, of course, but hopeful.  The Rays have played so well, and if they get off on the right foot, Boston won’t get the energy from the fans like they would at Fenway, and will be less likely to stage a big comeback like they did on Thursday night.

So, the boy who never thought there’d be big league ball in his town will tonight watch his home team take on a storied and favored opponent.  (I know the Red Sox are favored by the radio and television and newspaper covereage this series has received.)  I’ll watch the game on TV, of course, but if I could be there I’d look a lot like the other boys in the bleachers:  I’d have a wide-eyed expression of amazement at being witness to the most perfect sport, and I’d be wearing the baseball glove that my father gave me 23 years ago today.

So, when I went to bed last night the Rays were up 7-0 late in the game.  I figured victory was assured.  Well, I was wrong.  Somehow the Red Sox managed to pull off the second biggest come-from-behind victory in the history of the playoffs.  I am a little troubled that the Rays didn’t finish off the Sox as soon as they could, but it will be sweet if they can do it tomorrow night at Tropicana Field in front of the home crowd.  They are still a game up on the Red Sox, so I won’t despair right now.  But if the Rays can’t win tomorrow night, and the series goes to a seventh game, I Sunday will be very stressful.

I do not wish to jinx anything, but from what I am seeing, the Rays appear unstoppable.  By the end of the first inning tonight they were up by three.  They were up by five a couple innings later.  I went to watch a bit of Frontline’s election special tonight, and when I came back it was the top of the eighth, and the Rays were up 11-1, and within a couple seconds scored two more runs off an extra-base hit.

From worst to first?  The Rays are just an incredible baseball team to watch.  I don’t know how this happened, but I am very excited.