Today I am a Rays fan, first and foremost.

  I grew up in the 1950’s in the NorthEast within broadcast distance of New York City and watched the Yankees during all those championship years in the late 50’s and early 60’s. How couldn’t you be a fan with the likes of Mickey, Yogi, Roger, Tony, Whitey, Elston, et al. Then a funny thing happened in 1962. No, I really mean a funny thing called the New York Mets. This was some strange stuff. It looked like baseball…mostly, but it was definately NOT the Yankees. They lost nearly every game! But it was very entertaining and engaging. Somehow over the course of a season I became enamoured with the Amazins. I was just 11 years old and understood baseball purely by what was displayed on the field and what was printed on the back of a baseball card or in the papers the next day. It wasn’t pretty but they had something undeniable going for them…hope. They would fill their stadium with 55,000 fans who were flashing banners and having a great time, win or lose. I recall “Banner Day” with a little kid carrying a tiny little banner that said “RESIST”. It stuck out amongst all of the large and cleaver ones. I am not sure that anyone knew exactly what that meant in words but every true Mets fan understood it’s meaning very well. It would be several more years before they won the World Series in 1969. Nothing could ever top that for me. By that time I had been a fan for seven years; seven years of despiration and hope that seemed like a lifetime, that finally came together in early June when they began their run. It was just magical.

The Mets remained my team of choice for thirty more years and then slowly over time starting in 1998 those Devil Rays began to win me over. Perhaps it was that persistance, resistance and hope that I so loved in the 1960’s. Win or lose I retained that hope and belief that they would someday repeat the “Impossible Dream” of the Mets in 1969 and they darned near did it last year. It was definately the closest thing to 1969 that I could have hoped for.

Baseball has become a different game since I was a kid. Not so much different on the field as it is in my head. Now, thanks to blogs like this, baseball has become a business whose product is subject to statistical analysis much like the financial markets. It has certainly taken some of the romance and pureness from the game for me but only when I am thinking of it as an adult. When I am at the park (which is fairly often) or watching on TV, the simplicity and purity of the sport come out again and I just cheer as loud as I can for the good guys.

This is a great team. It has great management and a great product line of players that reaches down to the Rookie Leagues. I really hope that it is my last team. Three is enough for me.

I cannot remember why as nobody in my family followed baseball at all, and we lived 100 miles NW of NYC so that I never attended a professional ballgame until I was in college. I suppose as my friends were fans and everyone rooted either for the Giants, Dodgers or Yankees, I settled on the Bronx team where I had been born. I know I was intrigued by the baseball names I heard-Ferris Fain, Gus Zernial, Snuffy Stirnweiss, Minnie Minoso and for some reason Vic Raschi. When I learned that Raschi was known as “the Springfield Rifle”, I was hooked.

Always fascinated by how expansion teams developed, and since my son had moved to St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, I bought season tickets for us to that first season although I could only attend a few games. (My logic was that the new team would become a tough ticket. So much for my analytical abilities.) I flew down for the opening 4 game series against Detroit of course and continued to follow the team from afar. From the start, the team drove me nuts, not simply because of the losses, but because of the stupid things the management kept doing and the lack of anything resembling a consistent plan or philosophy. Nonetheless, I lived in hope and kept talking the team up to my friends. (My speechifying is much more laconic than my writing.)

I loved the late 90s Yankee teams, much more than the winning teams of the 70s or 50s. But increasingly I found my affection for the Rays increasing despite the frustrations, and when I moved here in 2006, coincident with the new ownership, the balance between my continuing Yankee loyalty and developing affection for the Rays began to tilt toward TB. I have never been alienated by the Yankee spending or any of the other nonsense. It was just that from the start I admired everything I read and observed about the new management team and Maddon, and living here made it all more personal.

By 2007, the transformation was complete. I eagerly looked forward to 2009 as the target for fulfillment of my confidence that this team was becoming a contender and simply hoped that 2008 would point in that direction. I am still floating from the experience of 2008 and probably always will.

I grew up a Reds fan. I started following minor league baseball in 03 and started really learning more about the minors in 04’. Barry Larkin was retiring, BJ Upton was obliterating the minors and we had Delmon Young and Jeff Niemann. Then we traded for Scott Kazmir. I was hooked.

I lurk a lot. =)

I grew up in small-town Iowa and Alaska so there was no “home team”. My mom is a Yankees fan because she’s from New Jersey, but I never really picked up on that. I watched the Cubs on WGN a lot and liked Mark Grace, Andre Dawson, and Ryne Sandberg, but was never a true fan of the Cubs either. I went to college in Illinois and my friends were mostly White Sox fans, I watched a lot of baseball but still didn’t have a real favorite team.

Then in 2005 I had a summer internship in downtown St. Petersburg, and my coworkers had Rays season tickets. After going to games all summer long I was hooked, despite all the losing. I planned to move back to Tampa after college but the company I interned at went under, and I ended up in the Chicago burbs. I have been following on the internet ever since and last year was really special. Needless to say I had a GREAT time ribbing my friends as the Rays beat the White Sox, and I paid way too much for tickets to Game 3 in Chicago and it was totally worth it (even though they lost).

It would definitely take a lot for me to change my allegiance in the future, especially since I am already used to being an out-of-town fan (I’ve also been a hardcore Vikings fan since high school and never lived in Minnesota, though my fiance is from the area and I’ve been to two games now with her family, which was awesome).

Great thread, and let’s go RAYS!!!!!