Tropicana Field got some nice new interior decorating last night: two pennant-shaped flags, simple blue letters on a white background, flying high in left field, guaranteed never to get weathered and never to flap in the breeze.They read:

• AL East 2008 Champions

• American League 2008 Champions

(I would have liked to insert a photo of them here, but the CL house camera lacks a telephoto lens. I snapped this pic of B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria during batting practice; it'll have to suffice.)

The Tampa Bay Rays raised the banners in a pomp-filled pregame ceremony, every bit of which the team and the town and the sold-out crowd deserved. In a nice touch, several Rays players carried the rolled-up flags from the dugout to left field for their ascension to the rafters.

The rest of the night went according to script: The Rays trounced — or is that pounded, or slaughtered? — the New York Yankees 15-5, and had the mercy rule had been in effect, New York might not have put up some late-inning runs.

This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2009.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...