As the other city by the other bay, the self-proclaimed ‘Titletown’ of Tampa Bay prepares to host Game 1 of the American League Division Series Thursday night at Tropicana Field, I see an opening for your suddenly sky-high Boston Red Sox.
It’s been long rumored that professional athletes don’t read their press clippings or listen to what’s being said about them, but when questioned I always find it ironic that they always know the narrative that surrounds them. Wonder how that happens?
For the Rays, since they took over first place of the AL East on July 3 and never looked back the press surrounding them has been beyond positive. It’s been daily affirmation unseen anywhere since Stuart Smalley left Saturday Night Live. Make no mistake, the Rays have earned their massive heaps of praise but I’m thinking that after three-plus months of some serious intergalactic level ball washing that it may actually have left a mark.
A permanent one ...
It’s true, Tampa Bay (or Titletown Lite, as I call them) is on a roll. They’ve got the GOAT, our GOAT Tom Brady. They have the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers, the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Lightning and the 2020 runner-up Rays who check all of the boxes and just keep winning. Just ask anybody covering them. Or anyone who knows anyone who covers them. Or anyone in Tampa Bay. Or anyone that talks about Tampa Bay. Or anyone that has been to Tampa Bay, flown into its airport or driven through it.
I get it. The Rays are good and everyone knows it but often times in sports, when teams or their top players get anointed before the actual bell sounds the results aren’t always great. The list is long of teams and stars whose path to championship gold was wrongfully preordained.
Here are some examples.
There were the very many years of the A-Rod Yankees who won a whopping one World Series in 2009 when they had a roster and payroll made to win 10. The '90’s Atlanta Braves come to mind who were annually the preseason projected champion for nearly a decade, yet also managed to win just one World Series. Those teams had maybe the best 1-2-3 pitching punch in the history of the game with Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz but are better known for their not-so-near misses and early exits during the postseason.
The Peyton Manning Colts broke through for another whopping one Super Bowl in 2006 while ESPN and all of the NFL’s national media henchman seemingly coronated them every year despite Brady and the Patriots steamrolling over Manning season after season after season. The LeBron James Cavaliers prior to taking ‘his talents to Miami’ were an annual choke job and painful as it is, our own 2007 Patriots were basically coronated in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLII.
Now I get it, those examples are different because the makeup of those teams were superstar laden while this Tampa Bay ball club has a much grittier sum of its parts type of feel. I like their makeup and their ball club. Their continued success with a bargain basement budget is beyond impressive. There is a very clear delta between those comparisons and these Rays. However, that coronation type narrative surrounding these Rays has that very same feel. It just does. Don’t agree? Find me a pundit that is picking the Red Sox in this series.
I’ll wait.
In the minds of many, the Red Sox, who were significant home underdogs going into Tuesday night’s glorious victory over the Yankees, will be just an obstacle to conquer over a small period of time. A distraction along the way to a predetermined destiny. Knowing these Red Sox, their makeup and the path they had to take, I think that’s a foolish assumption.
Which team has actually won a World Series recently? It’s not the Rays, it’s the Red Sox. Enough of the core of that 2018 World Series Championship team is still intact. Which team’s manager has more impressively proven his postseason meddle? That would be the Red Sox manager, Alex Cora. Who did the Chief Baseball Officer of the Red Sox Chaim Bloom work for during his years of critical development? That would be the Rays.
So they have the experience, the institutional knowledge of their opponent and understand how to successfully navigate October postseason baseball.
The Rays could very well dominate this series as they have with most of their opponents all season long; there is certainly plenty of media hype and box score documentation to support that. These Red Sox however have something that the Rays would be wise to recognize and that quality is resilience. This is a resilient bunch and now after two tumultuous months, they are suddenly riding high. They should be feeling great, have momentum on their side and have proven to be resilient when they absolutely had to be.
So the Rays might have the hype and the better club, but they’d be fools to look beyond these Red Sox as their season of heralded press clippings suggest they should.
Resilience, belief and momentum. Sounds like a formula for an upset to me.