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Thanks A Million, Longoria Tells Fans

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By MARC LANCASTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 11, 2008

CLEVELAND - It's hard to say whether anyone at Major League Baseball's Park Avenue offices got online this week to cast a vote for Evan Longoria's All-Star candidacy, but the game's powers that be probably weren't too upset when the Rays rookie secured his place Thursday.

When it comes to the future of the game, Longoria is pretty close to the complete package of ability, work ethic and personality that MLB - or any professional sports operation - would love to have as a standard-bearer. And the 22-year-old is reaching that point quickly, as evidenced by his showing in five days of online voting.

Longoria received nine million votes of the 47.8 million cast overall, a record for any player since the final ballot was added in 2002.

"I just want to say thanks to the fans, thanks to everybody who voted. That's got to be first and foremost," he said. "I couldn't have done it without everybody who voted."

His vote total is a pretty emphatic message that people want to see more of the charismatic third baseman, who has ridden a wave of positive publicity since spring training and backed it up with his play on the field.

"I think any time you get some of the newer, fresh blood into the mix and have him play at such a high level, obviously I think that creates excitement and a stir," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "And then, furthermore, you take him and his personality also - I think that he's ingratiating and I think the general public, the fans, are really going to appreciate him as a person as well as a player. I think he really fits the All-Star mold."

Longoria is the first rookie third baseman to make the All-Star team since the Reds' Chris Sabo in 1988 - a fitting predecessor, as Sabo's scrappy style endeared him to fans well beyond Cincinnati.

That must be the case with Longoria, too, as he probably wouldn't have been able to win such a wide-open race based solely on support from the Tampa Bay area.

"It speaks a lot about the club and what we've done this year and the changes that they've made and the guys that we've brought in," Longoria said.

"We've done a good job coming together as a team, and this shows that the nation's behind us."

The fact that Longoria was able to outpoll the likes of Chicago's Jermaine Dye and the Yankees' Jason Giambi - who had a prodigious marketing campaign at his back - says just as much about how high the Rays have risen in the nation's baseball consciousness as how well Longoria has played.

"Going head-to-head with a player from the Chicago market and a player from the New York market, I think it's quite an accomplishment for him to have won that," said Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman. "A lot of it has to do with the success of the team and the success he's had, so I think it's kind of a perfect storm of events that has allowed him to win that vote."

Not that Longoria left it entirely to chance. Admittedly "pretty pumped up" in the final hours before balloting closed at 5 p.m. Thursday, he admitted to voting for himself about 20 times, just in case.

"I had to," he said without much more than a trace of sheepishness.

After keeping everything bottled up and businesslike for five days, Longoria's excitement finally burst through when he got the call that he had made it as the Rays stretched on the field before batting practice.

His teammates, who did some voting of their own, gave him a spontaneous round of applause, and Longoria pronounced the moment "the dream come true that I was hoping for."

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