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On Sunday, Rays To Cast Out The Devil We've Known

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By BAIRD HELGESON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 29, 2007

TAMPA - The Tampa Bay Devil Rays will exorcize the demon from its nickname Sunday after the final game of the season.

After that, Tampa Bay's Major League Baseball franchise will have a new name and color scheme, to be officially unveiled in November.

Media reports have revealed the team's new name will be the Tampa Bay Rays, but team officials wouldn't confirm that Friday.

It will be the first time in more than 40 years that a professional baseball team has changed its name without moving to a new city. In 1965, the Houston Colt .45s became the Astros in honor of the local space industry.

Some Tampa Bay sports fans never warmed to the nickname of the nine-year-old expansion team. A few took issue with the less-than-pious nickname. Others disliked the name because that breed of ray (manta birostris) isn't a regular visitor of area waters.

Among sports fans, the team's string of losing seasons turned the Devil Rays' name into a euphemism for failure.

'There's so much negative associated with the name,' said Howard Bloom, who publishes the Web site Sports Business News. 'The image can't get any worse than it has been, so the name change can only be a positive.'

For critics of the old name, the trouble started in 1995.

Former principal owner Vince Naimoli drew 7,000 suggestions when he asked the public for help choosing a team name for the new franchise.

'It's like naming a baby,' Naimoli told The Tampa Tribune at the time. 'This is our new baseball baby, and we're going to give all the aunts and uncles the chance to name it.'

Favorites included the Pelicans, Manatees and the Tarpons, a sport fish and also a nod to the former minor league Tampa Tarpons.

A few enterprising souls muddied the selection process when they bought the rights to several possible nicknames, such as Tampa Bay Thunder, Thunderbolts and Tarpons.

Naimoli reportedly liked Stingrays, but the Maui minor league baseball team of the Hawaiian Winter League wouldn't part with it. John Higgins, the Rays vice president of administration and general counsel, said many businesses already owned various 'stingray' trademarks.

Higgins said the organization always held the 'Rays' name in high regard. The team likes the double meaning of the rays from the sun and the rays swimming in the water.

'It's very Florida, very Tampa Bay,' he said.

The team considered the name 'Manta Rays,' but Higgins said that people weren't wild about the word 'manta.'

With that, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were born.

John Odell, curator of history and research at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., said the growth of sports marketing has made it less common for teams to switch nicknames. He said franchise names have become iconic brand names with deep roots in their communities.

Teams routinely changed names until the end of World War II, before the trend of buying trademarks for team names, Odell said.

The Atlanta Braves were called the Beaneaters when they were in Boston. The Boston Red Sox were once known as the Pilgrims. The Cincinnati Reds were the Red Stockings before becoming the Redlegs.

In 1943, the Philadelphia Phillies changed their name to the Blue Jays.

It didn't take.

Higgins said the name and color scheme change is part of an effort to reinvent the team. Leaked illustrations of team uniforms reveal a navy and light blue color scheme with a touch of yellow.

'It's the perfect time to do it all together,' he said.

The local baseball team isn't alone in trying to distance itself from the bedeviling name of the harmless ray.

Students at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, have cheered the maroon and gold Devil Rays for 35 years.

For the school, the mascot is a little more fitting than in Tampa Bay. The floppy, plankton-loving ray is more common in the Caribbean. Still, a movement is under way to change the name, or at least ditch the devil.

'A lot of people object to it,' Principal Sharon Ann McCollum said.

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at (813) 259-7668 or bhelgeson@tampatrib.com.

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