Between the time the American League East team were formed in 1998 and the start of this season, they were the Tampa Bay Devil Rays - and they were baseball's bad joke. Every season they finished last in the division, except in 2004 when they scaled the heights and finished last but one. They have never managed to win more than 70 games in a 162-game season and they are the only major league team never to have reached the post-season play-offs.
Then, last November, Stuart Sternberg, the principal owner of this bunch of losers, announced that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were no more, and that, for the 2008 season and ever more, they would be the Tampa Bay Rays. Then April arrived, the season started and the Rays started winning. Not an occasional game, but a lot. And they have kept winning. It is August and they have almost passed the 70-win barrier, they lead the division ahead of the Sox and Yankees, and they have the best record of any team in the American League.
Last Wednesday, in a stunning performance at their home ground, Tropicana Field, against the Cleveland Indians, the Rays came from 4-7 in the bottom of the ninth to tie it 7-7 and then went on to win it 10-7 with a walk-off, three-run homer from Carlos Pena. While the manager Joe Maddon knows that there is still a long way to go before the Rays can contemplate post-season play in October, what they have achieved so far is at least as remarkable in American sport in 2008 as Tiger Woods winning the US Open on one leg.
The Rays have got where they are by building patiently and slowly from the bottom up. They have drafted promising, young talent and given it time to mature. They have brought in veterans when necessary, giving a much-needed boost to the bullpen. And they have played good, defensive baseball. Maddon will not tolerate sloppiness or lack of hustle, as he proved last week by benching one of his young stars for failing to show sufficient endeavour in chasing down a routine ground ball.
