What: Yanks-Rays at Tropicana Field
Must-Do? Says Who? Chaim Bloom, Assistant, Baseball Operations, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Casualties: $0, thanks to Chaim; shredded vocal chords, thanks to B.J. Upton; stinging right hand, thanks to the foul ball.
Notable Quotable: “If you fuck up any foul balls, try to screw over the visiting team this time.†–Chaim, via text message
Baseball’s a bit backwards at Tropicana Field when the Yanks are in town. Rooting for the Rays by default (a newfound, casual allegiance that doesn’t interfere with my lifelong love of the Mets), I winced to see hometown fans outnumbered by the Yankee horde. Whatever happened to “root, root, root for the home team� The beer situation, of course, was no better — the fellow in front of me shelled out $19.50 for three Bud Lights. But it’s in poor taste to complain when you’re sitting in comp seats on the first base line, so I watched, sober and cautiously optimistic, as the mascot Raymond shook his shaggy groove thang on top of the Rays’ dugout and urged us to make some noise.
Which we did, especially when the Rays jumped to an early lead and B.J. Upton stole a warning track double in dead centerfield. The man next to me, a season ticket-holder who knows each Ray’s batting average to the fifth decimal, clapped quietly at Upton’s heroics and then groaned softly when Abreu stole back the lead. “I was born and raised in Philly, so I always loved the Phils,†he told us, “but now I’m about 50-50. I hate to miss a game.†He blew his nose into a napkin. “I really like the Devil Rays,†he said. I felt so bad I didn’t even mention the residual dangler in his right nostril.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2007.