Until the past week or so, the Tampa Bay Rays have been one of the hottest teams in Major League Baseball, with many attributing their success to rookie sensation Wil Myers (who one of my CL colleagues last week was ready to put in the Hall of Fame, all after one month in the bigs).
A hotter team, however, has been the Los Angeles Dodgers. Considered to be formidable before the 2013 regulars season began, the Dodgers struggled mightily for the first two months of the season, and USA Today seemed to have Don Mattingly canned at one point in late May.
But all of that spending (L.A. has the highest payroll by far in MLB, much higher than the NY Yanks), along with the addition of their own rookie sensation in Cuban exile Yasiel Puig, has catapulted L.A. to a dominant position in the National League West.
So it was exciting to see what was going to transpire this weekend in SoCal as these two clubs matched up in what could be a possible World Series match-up come October.
The results? Not good for Tampa Bay, as the Dodgers came from behind dramatically to win on Friday night, then easily won in the two nationally televised games this weekend. And seriously, Justin Verlander may be considered the pitcher of his generation, but isn't it really Clayton Kershaw? As a guy who has seen him win way too many games over the past few years, Rays fans got a dose of how awesome he was last night.
The Rays lost weekend came after Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Hillsborough County Commission Ken Hagan met for the first time to discuss their game plan in talking with the Rays, after Bill Foster announced last week that he will allow the team (after it's negotiated) to speak to the two about possibly playing in their neck of the Bay area.
Speaking of Foster, he won the endorsement of the Tampa Tribune in his race for re-election yesterday. Meanwhile the Tampa Bay Times chose Rick Kriseman in their endorsement. The Times didn't have anything too positive to say about Kathleen Ford's candidacy.
And on ABC's This Week yesterday we saw Lon Snowden, the father of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, announce that he would be traveling to Russia soon to visit his son. Mr. Snowden said he vehemently disagrees with the comments by President Obama and others that his son is not a patriot.
