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The Summer of Baseball is over tonight.  The Texas Rangers just beat my beloved Rays in the fifth game of the American League Division Series in St. Petersburg.  Cliff Lee is an amazing pitcher, and the Rays were no match for him this series.  I was prepared for the inevitable after Game Two last week, but the Rays won two in Arlington to force an improbable Game Five today.  Though I hoped they might have momentum on their side, it wasn’t to be.  I am not heartbroken.  The Rangers legitimately played superior ball, and they deserved the win.  I will cheer for them to crush the hated Yankees.

I suppose this is the last time I’ll see Carl Crawford and Rafael Soriano in Rays uniforms.  I’ll miss them.  They both contributed substantially to the outstanding season the Rays had.  Let’s not forget: the Rays had the best record in baseball for much of the summer, and concluded the regular season as the best team in the American League – ahead of the wild card-winning Yankees.

I watched an obscene amount of baseball on television this summer, from the April games played in the Chicago cold, to the stupid inter-league games, to the games played to nearly empty stadiums in Toronto, Baltimore, and, sadly, at home.  The games I saw in person at Tropicana Field will remain wonderful memories.  This season saw another perfect game.  There was a no-hitter.  There was fantastic small-ball, and a few giant walk-off wins.  My cousin Phil even got to sing the national anthem!  There was plenty to enjoy.

This was the Summer of Baseball – the first summer since my childhood in which I allowed myself to become completely immersed in the world’s most perfect game.  It was totally worth it.

UPDATE: Gary Shelton knows way more about sports than I do, but I think he’s got this thing all wrong.

Let’s face it. Teams lose. And if the Rays had lost a 2-1 pitchers duel, you would probably grumble for a day and let it go. If the Rays had lost 8-6, you could probably live with it.

But this? This defeat was so miserable, so one-sided, that it’s bound to induce amnesia. … When people remember this season…it will be for the dismal way that it concluded.

One sided?  True, the score read 5-1 when the game was over, but let’s remember that the Rays were only down by two going into the last inning, when Soriano allowed a basehit and a home run.  The game was one-sided in that the Rays didn’t perform to their usual standard and Cliff Lee pitched like a hero, but this wasn’t the kind of one-sided game that sends fans home in the fifth inning because there’s no hope.  The Rays have won plenty of games in the last two innings when they’ve been down a couple runs.

Shelton is right that next year’s Rays team will be very different.  And it will hurt a little to lose Crawford and Soriano, but the Rays have done pretty well with new talent this year, and I think that next season will have its surprise standouts, too.  Will they win the division again?  Who knows.  The hated Yankees are always going to be contenders because they have all the money.  Boston will always be tough.  And Baltimore won’t be lousy next season.  So the Rays have an uphill battle.  But everybody does.  That’s baseball.

Is it disappointing that the Rays didn’t win the pennant this year, when they played as well as they ever have?  Sure.  But for Shelton to gripe that the Rays “barely won the AL East” seems a bit unfair.  The AL East is almost universally acknowledged to be the toughest division in baseball.  Only one team in the AL East finished below .500 this season.  The Rays’ record this season would have put them atop every other division except the National League East, where Philadelphia had one more win.  The Rays finished six games ahead of Texas, two ahead of Minnesota, plus four games ahead of San Francisco, and five above Cincinnati.

So, be disappointed that the Rays lost, but don’t claim that this season ended in some pathetic rout.  Texas won fair and square.  That’s the game.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on October 12th, 2010 | No Comments »

With the way my beloved Rays played in the first two games of the division series against the Texas Rangers, I thought for sure that the Summer of Baseball would end tonight in Arlington.  I was prepared mentally.  I would be disappointed but not crushed, since their elimination from post-season play would have been deserved.  And, in any case, the Rangers are not evil, so losing to them would not be as upsetting as losing to the hated Yankees.  Amazingly, the Rays won tonight, and so go on to fight another day.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on October 9th, 2010 | No Comments »

My Beloved Rays are once again alone at the top of the American League – the first time since 12 June.  It helps that the Hated Yankees have lost two games in a row to Toronto.  But more than anything the Rays are just playing great baseball, including against New York, winning last weekend’s series in St. Petersburg.

B.J. Upton, a player I’ve been known to badmouth, has really stepped up lately, and his performance tonight shut me up.  His three-run home run won the game, and Sean Rodriguez’s long ball gave the game good momentum early.  I had until recently been dismayed by the way the Rays had been leaving so many runners on base, and how their bats had been quiet, but these recent games show them improving in that regard.  Good ball tonight!

Filed under: Sports on August 3rd, 2010 | No Comments »

HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA – This summer I have watched nearly every Tampa Bay Rays game, missing only those that took place while I was away in Virginia, and a few on evenings when Miriam and I were enjoying a night on the town.  I have spent upwards of twelve hours per week all summer watching Rays baseball.

I am visiting friends in south Florida for a couple days this week, and while we enjoyed a relaxing dip in the pool last night, Matt Garza pitched the first no hitter in Tampa Bay Rays history against Detroit, and I missed it.  Judging from history, they’ll have several no hitters and two perfect games thrown against them before a Rays pitcher has another such performance.

Filed under: Sports on July 27th, 2010 | No Comments »

Back in April, my father and I attended a game at Tropicana Field that didn’t turn out as we’d hoped.  The hated New York Yankees beat our beloved Rays.  Worse, the already large contingent of Yankees fans in attendance became a majority by the late innings, so that it felt as though we were strangers at our own home park.  We resolved not to attend any more home games against New York or Boston.  So, last week’s Cleveland series seemed to be the perfect opportunity to see the Rays again, and we attended Sunday afternoon’s game against the Indians.

We arrived early, and parked in a distant, but cheap, parking lot.  We had to walk five blocks or so, but we saved at least ten dollars, and avoided all the post-game traffic.  We bought tickets at the park this time, and for two extra dollars each, the tickets included lunch.  The folks in the box office must have really been pushing the right field bleachers, because our seats–in Row GG, Section 142–were cramped.  When the end of the second inning rolled around, we opted not to try and squeeze our way back through the crowd, and instead moved to an emptier part of the park, above the Rays’ bullpen.  Those were much better seats.

The game itself got off to a troubling start.  Cleveland scored three runs in the top of the first.  But the Rays came back, and were ahead by the time Wheeler took over for Niemann.  Regrettably, Wheeler blew the lead, and the game stayed tied into extra innings.  The Rays had ample opportunities to go ahead, but they left more than a dozen guys on base through the course of the game.  Finally, in the bottom of the tenth, Bartlett hit a ball into deep right-center field, sending the winning run home.  The Cleveland outfielders didn’t even bother to pick up the ball; they just turned around and walked off the field.  My Dad and I left happy.

Later, I saw that we were on TV: once when we were in our outfield seats, and several times when the cameras focused across the infield.

All in all, a wonderful day halfway through the Summer of Baseball.

Filed under: Family, Sports on July 15th, 2010 | No Comments »