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If A Stadium Is The Bottom, Baby, You're The Trop!

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 9, 2008

As you practice your spitting technique, grabbing various parts of your anatomy and sharpening your scorecard pencil in advance of Friday's big game between the Boston Red Sox and God's chosen children of our own "Field of Dreams," just a few scribblings.

1. If you find yourself in front of a television camera try to refrain from: "Woo! Woo! We're No. 1!" Please, can we try to come up with something more original?

2. Despite their best efforts to prevent it, many pundits in the national sports media will still continue to refer to the Rays as a Tampa team. This annoys the hotsy-tots of St. Petersburg no end. Over on this side of Tampa Bay, though, not so much.

3. Yes, the Trop is a dump, the mother of all dumps, the dump's dump, but it is our dump. To be sure, the Tampa Rays' (sorry, couldn't resist) home field will be belittled by the national sports media, who won't even know where they are in the first place. Try to pretend to be outraged, as if someone actually noticed your sister is 40 miles of bad road.

First Pitch

4. Don't you think, given all the cowbell rage, that Christopher Walken should be invited to throw out the first pitch? Hey, it couldn't be any weirder than the season the Rays have just experienced.

5. You're thinking of getting a mohawk, aren't you? Stop it! Stop it right now! You're a 47-year-old accountant for crying out loud! Grow up!

6. What do you think the odds are that Tampa's poet laureate James Tokely is working on his masterwork - "Ode To Longoria!" - that will come off making "Beowulf" sound like: "There once was a girl from Nantucket ..."?

7. And while we're on the subject, what do you think the odds are Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman is trying to figure out a way to finagle his way into a Trop skybox even if he has to dress up as an upstairs French maid posing as a server to get close to a buffet table?

Uh, Still No!

8. Memo to Rays owner Stuart Sternberg: If the team goes to the World Series this year, we know you'll expect the citizenry to pay for a new ball park for the lads. You're a funny guy, but the answer is, or should be, no, a thousand times no. But hey, thanks a bunch for a great season.

9. Don Zimmer should sing the national anthem. After all, didn't he scout Francis Scott Key?

10. Since this is a relatively new experience for St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, when you make the traditional cheesy bet with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, while it is an interesting idea, offering to send the race-baiting village blabbermouth Omali Yeshitela to Beantown is probably a nonstarter. Besides, it might encourage the Beasts of the Bayfront (oooooh, scary!) to throw the series.

11. OK, sure it's a tradition and all that, but is there a sadder sight than to watch all that perfectly drinkable champagne being wasted during post-game celebrations? Wouldn't spraying each other with club soda, or Mountain Dew, or Boone's Farm swill make more sense?

12. On second thought, now that the veep thing went bust, St. Petersburg native and favorite son Gov. Charlie Crist would look positively spiffy with a mohawk.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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