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Devil Be Gone: Rays Choose New Identity

JASON BEHNKEN / The Tampa Tribune

Rays infielder Ben Zobrist models the team's new uniform at Straub Park on Thursday.

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By Marc Lancaster, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 9, 2007

Updated: 11/09/2007 12:13 am

Audio Slideshow: Rays Players, Managers Model The New Uniform

ST. PETERSBURG - No one needed to tell Stuart Sternberg back in the fall of 2005 that the baseball team he had just purchased came with a well-entrenched image problem.

Years of ineptitude on the field compounded by a ballpark experience that was never considered particularly fan-friendly made it difficult to cozy up to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Few wanted to associate themselves with the local major-league team, and it was difficult to blame them.

Carl Crawford models the new uniform.

Sternberg set out to attack that apathy, instituting free parking and giving Tropicana Field an overhaul, but he also put the most basic elements of the franchise's identity on the table. The new management group couldn't snap its fingers and produce a serious pennant contender, but it could explore other avenues that might lead the public to embrace the Devil Rays.

High on that list was changing the very name of the team, and in conjunction with that, its look. Within two months of Sternberg's arrival, team executives began working with Interbrand, a New York-based corporate image-maker, to sort through potential alternatives to the name "Devil Rays."

Throughout a process that began with more than a million computer-generated possibilities that were progressively narrowed down, the most intuitive option - "Rays" - remained at the back of everyone's mind. But it took awhile for everything to come full circle.

Interbrand's computers came up with a boundless menu of choices. They were broken down into categories - types of animals, weather patterns, historical references (such as Yankees or Dodgers). Filters were applied to narrow the list.

"We didn't want to have the same name as any other professional sports teams," team president Matt Silverman said, "so we couldn't be the Kings because of Sacramento, we couldn't be the Titans because of Tennessee. We also didn't want to have the same name as a major college."

They eventually whittled the possibilities to about 50 names and began the laborious process of determining which ones could be used without infringing upon other brands.

"It was surprising to me how difficult legally it is to come up with a new name and have it work in all the different trademark categories," Silverman said. "We couldn't become the Stingrays because of Schwinn-brand Sting-Ray bicycles and the Corvette Stingray - we wouldn't have been able to do the type of merchandising that baseball requires us to do."

Among the finalists were the Cannons, Renegades, Tropics and Wave. They also considered the Dukes.

In the end, though, the consensus was that none of those choices resonated like "Rays."

Any trepidation the team might have felt about maintaining a nominal link to the past it was trying to shed was tempered by one factor in particular: It wasn't the Rays that seemed to keep people at a distance; it was the Devil.

"We even had research that showed when fans spoke glowingly about the organization, they used Rays," Silverman said. "When they were being critical of the organization, they referred to us as the Devil Rays.

"We did focus groups, and we found that pattern prevalent in all the focus groups."

By mid-2006, team executives had settled on Rays and turned to Major League Baseball for assistance in designing new uniforms. Their challenge was to build a look around a moniker fans already tended to use while still making it fresh. They chose to de-emphasize the aquatic creature aspect and center their marketing on rays of light. The new jerseys feature a sunburst on the right chest, and there was much talk of "energy" during Thursday night's rollout event.

But the predominant color in the new scheme is a dark blue complemented by light blue shading that emerged from nothing more scientific than the fact that Sternberg insisted on that color. The styling is absent any flashy elements, which appealed to those who will spend the most time in the new jerseys.

"I just like how simple they are," pitcher Scott Kazmir said. "It's professional."

Added outfielder B.J. Upton: "I love the colors. They're just classic uniforms."

The players seemed genuinely impressed with the final product, and the Rays' brain trust hopes that pride will spread throughout the offices of Tropicana Field and beyond.

"I think this gives us, as an organization, an identity," Sternberg said. "It was something where we were tied to the past, and the past wasn't something we necessarily wanted to be known for.

"Nobody's running and hiding from it, and we're proud of certain aspects of it, but this was something that the organization was really able to put their arms around."

Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227 or mlancaster@tampatrib.com.

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