Tag: devil rays

Now, as you all know from hearing me rant about it, I think Major League Baseball has done a lot of stupid things lately.

In fact, more often than not, the phrase “Major League Baseball announces” is enough to get me worried.

But one thing they’ve done extremely well is use the Internet to bring their product to fans in ways that, just a few years ago, weren’t possible. They have game tickers, pitch-by-pitch updates, and a variety of video packages that is pretty impressive.

By far the best thing they do, though, is have the radio broadcasts of all games available on their web site. Having spent years tuning in KMOX after dark to (barely) hear the Cardinals, being able to listen to games clearly has been a sheer, unadulterated joy. We don’t have the Internet at home, but getting to hear day games while I’m at work, and getting to catch up on particularly exciting games from the night before has been wonderful. On top of that, when the Cardinals aren’t playing, I can listen to, say, Vin Scully.

And this year, for the first time in five years, they’re not raising their prices. Maybe they’re learning? Probably not. But right now, I don’t care. We’re hours away from the first game, and soon my workday will fly by at the pace of a ballgame.

Now, if they could just do something about that site design. I suppose it could be worse. It could flash and play Smashmouth or something.

Oh, and Jim, you’re invited to the house for a big breakfast and a viewing of tomorrow morning’s game featuring your favorite team and that team that couldn’t hit Josh Beckett. Game starts just after 4 AM Central Standard Time, and just after 5 AM Rocketship TiVo Time.

You know, I didn’t even mention the Fox Sports Net promo in which the burglars are ransacking a house, but stop and put all the stuff back after they spy…some Devil Rays autographed collector’s items. At the end of the spot, the burglars leave a note: “Sorry about the window.”

I’m pretty sure this is a promo used in every FSN region, with the only difference being a different team’s merchandise in the point-of-view shot. But, really, shouldn’t Fox Sports Net Florida have also re-edited it so that the note read “Sorry about the Devil Rays”?

But it’s all moot, as far as I’m concerned, now that I informed a DirecTV “entertainment consultant” of my sincere desire to not have my DirecTV bill go up by $35.00 a month after my introductory period ends. I think it’s a little creepy that they can take away channels instantly while you’re still on the phone with them (it seems to take hours, if not days, for the cable company to make changes). Kind of makes you wonder what else they can take away.

Actually, as I understand it, the MLB pay-per-view package is probably going to be free for the first week of the season, so maybe I’ll end up watching a Devil Rays regular-season game, assuming every other game being played simultaneously is in a rain delay (or snow delay) and my TiVo has failed to record any “Match Game” episodes recently.

I’ve been thinking about how I would go about promoting the Devil Rays, if that were part of my sentence for some particularly heinous crime.

It’s tough. You can’t try to convince people that you’re going to win, because they’ve been watching for six years and they know which Sandberg you have on your team.

You can’t tell them about hope for the future, because even a casual fan can see that there’s no hope in the near future of passing the Orioles, let alone the Blue Jays, Red Sox, then the Yankees.

And you can’t use the Wrigley Field approach, selling drunken fun in the sun, because you play here.

You can’t even sell the team on the nine games they play against the Yankees at home, the only games that the mostly-100-year-old retirees from New York City who comprise your market care about. After all, it’s only nine games, and the Devil Rays know they’re bound to lose seven or eight of them.

So maybe the Devil Rays do have the right idea with the silly ad Jim described of the kids discussing the merits of Tino Martinez and Aubrey Huff. You’ve got to go for the kids. But, as in most activities, the D-Rays are going about this the wrong way. Here’s the text of my radio ad, which would run on, like, Radio Disney.

“Kids. Are you stuck visiting at Grandma’s house with NOTHING to do but watch Wheel of Fortune? And you can’t go anywhere because you can’t drive and our public transit system is nonexistent? And there are no other kids in the neighborhood because the only kids in Florida are at Tomorrowland right now?

I bet your Grandma doesn’t even have any video games.

That’s right. Being at Grandma’s sucks. It might be the only thing that sucks more than . . . . YOUR TAMPA BAY DEVIL RAYS!

Get Grandma to drop you off at the ballpark today! Tropicana Field: it’s the best place in Tampa to run around like a deranged orphan!”

I suppose I should give my email in case the Devil Rays want to give me a consulting contract. Oh, and the ad should be read in a wacky, kid-friendly voice.

Oh, those poor Devil Rays. You know it’s bad when your commercial is based on a premise (two kids being Devil Rays fans) that is so unlikely that even that Cadillac ad using Led Zeppelin seems more realistic.

But maybe that’s their idea. They want to distract viewers with the only premise less likely than the Rays winning 75 games?

Because my DirecTV introductory offer is up in a few days, I’m going to be canceling their sports channel package (turns out it’s not going to be worth $12.00 a month to be able to watch “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” on 15 different channels). However, I took advantage of it one last time today to watch some spring training baseball…Tigers vs. Devil Rays, from “Progress Energy Park, home of Al Lang Field,” as the announcers were careful to say.

During one commercial break, there was a promo for Devil Rays tickets: two kids on the beach arguing about who’s better, Aubrey Huff or Tino Martinez. “Tino’s the man!” “Aubrey’s the man!” Meanwhile, there’s sand being thrown on them; eventually, the scene widens to show that Pansy the Wuss-Wuss Fish has constructed a giant replica World Series trophy out of sand. Then one of the kids yells, “We’re trying to make sandcastles here!”

Oh, yeah, Rays 11, Tigers 3, but to be fair, it seemed like the Rays were using a lot of actual players, while the Tigers were using a lot of players with uniform numbers above 70, including some 3-digit numbers.

We have a blog

Three years ago, friends of ours named Luke and Sandy went on a baseball road trip and kept a joint blog about it. So I figured we should either rip them off, or pay homage to them, depending on whether or not Luke and Sandy are going to be reading this.

This is actually the replacement for some “manual” blogging I had been doing about this trip on my own web site, so I’ve copied all those entries over to here. The advantages are that Levi can easily make entries here as well, and we can both make entries from anywhere…including while we’re on the trip, if we can beg, borrow, or steal a computer capable of connecting to the Internet at some point.

It has also been rumored that Luke may be joining us for the first portion of our road trip. I hope he can make it, even if I disagree in part with his opinions on National Anthem etiquette. While I will happily sing along to an instrumental version (especially if it’s being played live by an organist), I will remain silent if someone is out on the field performing, because I actually want to listen to their performance. But I do agree that the cheering shouldn’t start until the end of the song, no matter how good the singer is at hitting the high note.

Therefore, in case they do instrumental versions of “O Canada” in Toronto and/or Montreal, I want to be sure I have the lyrics down.

On another note, my mother tells me that my cousin is getting married in Connecticut in July. Depending on the exact wedding plans (and the exact wedding location), I may attempt to come up with a scheme to visit New York for a day, a city which is a noticeable gap on the road trip itinerary. The Yankees will be in town that weekend, right before the All-Star break, playing my hometown Devil Rays.

2004 in Review, part 1

Now that things are finally a bit quieter at work, I’m finally going to do a season-ending wrap-up. And I’ve decided that the way to do it which will be the most fun for me is to pair bad and good things about the season and string them out over many, many posts until I get bored, or all of you get bored, or pitchers and catchers report. So here goes.

Bad:
The *#$)@&@#% Braves won their weak-ass division again. Remember at the All-Star Break, when Dan pointed out that the Braves’ struggles in the first half were one of the good things about the 2004 season so far? Yeah. That was nice. But now they’ve won their division every year since 1991 (except for 1994, when this much better Expos team would have beaten them, had it not been for Bud Selig). The last time the Braves didn’t win their division, I had just gotten my driver’s license. Only true political junkies knew who Bill Clinton was. Bob Hope wasn’t even 90 years old yet. John Smoltz’s Abe Lincoln beard had just gone out of style, along with high, starched collars and medicinal leeching.

And they’ve done it with a constantly changing cast. Smoltz is the only Braves player who’s been on every one of those teams. *#$)@&@#% Braves.

Good:

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays escaped the cellar for the first time in team history. And the American League’s Eastern Division had a new order of finish for the first time since 1998.

Original comments…

Toby: Levi, Surely you are as outraged as I am that a Cardinal didn’t win the MVP… Do you think having three legitimate candidates ended up hurting each of their chances?

Levi: I have to admit, Toby, that I think Bonds was the MVP. He was just that much better.

I am surprised that Beltre finished second, since both Edmonds and Pujols were better than he was, and Rolen was just as good.

Edmonds is the one I think got jobbed: in my view, he was the second-best player in baseball this year, hands-down. But he finishes a distant fifth.

Dan: Down the stretch I was pulling for Beltre, because he sure carried the Dodgers on their back (and as he was on my fantasy team, I was paying close attention). But when I put it all in perspective, the Giants are, really, a last-place team without Bonds. He’s just killer. I don’t like him, but he’s just in another world.

Of course, I’m no Cardinals fan. So I didn’t see which of they three were most deserving, were deserving at all, etc.

And I have my own issues with Jime. So I’d call Vlad or Tejada 2nd best, but that’s just me.

Dan: OT: http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/bal/news/bal_news.jsp?ymd=20041111&content_id=912833&vkey=news_bal&fext=.jsp — an update on the Orioles’ owbn Stahl.

Levi: Dan, it sounds like you dated Jimmy Edmonds, or were roommates with him, or the Porsche he sold you was a lemon.

Or do you have other problems with him?

Dan: Did I never tell you the story about the “Jime” fan?

I was at the one 2000 NLCS game the Mets lost (or, to your POV, that the Cardinals won), at Shea. There was some dude who was being insanely annoying, strangely combative guy wearing a shirt he made that said JimE (with no spaces) and a big No. 15. Under that it said MVP. He was a real pain in the ass and we (Mets fans) gave him an earful. And our seats sucked, so we were all collectively edgy as it is.

So that’s why I don’t like Jim Edmonds — or, Jime. Not a very good one, but at least there’s SOME story behind it.

Oh, and he had sex with my sister.

-Dan

What were they thinking? , or, Business as Usual in Tampa Bay

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays have released 1B/DH Randall Simon.

Now, this confuses me. That is to say, I’m not really confused about why a team might release a guy who’s managed only a .188/.266/.266 line for the year. What confuses me is why you’d release him a mere 20 days after you signed him? You might remember that I picked on the Pirates for releasing him a month ago when they had nothing to play for and no reason not to keep the guy around. But this is far less explicable.

What could the Devil Rays have seen in Simon’s 20 at-bats for them over the past 20 days that his whole career couldn’t have prepared them for? Did he sleep with someone’s wife? Does hs have particularly stinky socks? Did he steal Rocco Baldelli’s glove and try to sell it to a collector? Did that walking Sausage invasion of Florida that the D-Rays were worried about fizzle out? Does Tampa Bay have enough prospects that they needed every space on their 40-man rost . . . oh, that sentence is just too silly to finish typing.

Regardless, it appears that Simon’s career may have come to an end. So the next time we all gather, let’s raise a glass to the wildest-swinging hitter I’ve ever seen.

Original comments…

Jim: Sausage invasion? He sure wasn’t helping the Devil Rays defend Florida against the hurricane invasion!

Dan: Oh, this reminds me.. So as to avoid all the inevitable Ivan the Terrible references to that new hurricane, I want to refer to that storm as Hurricane Pudge. Who’s with me?

Levi: I’m so there. Great idea.