We have a lot of fun here at The Ray Area because baseball is a fun game that, in the immortal words of Terrence Mann, lets us “walk off to the bleachers and sit in [our] shirt sleeves on a perfect afternoon. [We'll] find [we] have reserved seats somewhere along the baselines where [we] sat  [ Read More ]

Yesterday, in the comments section of my post about Minnesota weather, Clayton, Merrill, Brendan and Travis were debating the relative merits of outside baseball in various extreme climates. In an effort to expand upon that debate, Brendan and I will debate whether or not Tropicana Field is a bad ballpark in this week’s Point-Counterpoint. Brendan  [ Read More ]

Brendan, you pinko-commie bastard.   Of course you think the Trop is a bad ballpark.  You and your left coast pals think the government should replace everything old with something new.  I mean, after all, why enjoy what we have if we can borrow to build more stuff?  The fact is, the Trop is a good  [ Read More ]

Mark, you 80-year-old-souled, argyle sock wearing, murder she wrote watching dirty geezer. That seems to be the only way you would like the Trop for a baseball game. Letʼs start with the location. Itʼs old people and itʼs run down. The only group of people who have a higher mean age than the citizens of  [ Read More ]

Snow? No one saw that coming when they decided to build an open-air ballpark in Minnesota.  Right? When I was at Ithaca College in Upstate New York, I worked on the Sports Information staff in the fall and spring.  During the spring, the upstate colleges have this strange tradition.  They schedule tons of games (for  [ Read More ]

A quick check of the tote board this morning finds the Rays in sole possession of 2nd place in the big bad AL East.  To get there, all they had to do was get back to .500.  That seems to beg the question, is the AL East really as tough as we all think it  [ Read More ]

Last Friday, in the comments of Brendan’s Ray Area debut, Mike McK suggested that Brendan and I engage in a SNL Point-Counterpoint style debate.* We just want to give the people what they want.  So, here is the first of what we hope to be many Point-Counterpoint Debates.  The first topic: Does Andrew Friedman give  [ Read More ]

Brendan you no block out cherry picker.  (See what I did there?  You cherry picked for easy layups and you just cherry picked two obvious examples for your argument while ignoring the overwhelming facts.  It has double meaning.  BAM!) Andrew Friedman doesn’t get credit for cutting trash like Fly Eli and trading Delmon.  If taking  [ Read More ]

Mark, you ball hogging, eddie munster looking hooker. All Andrew Friedman has done since he joined the Rays(ahem…Devil Rays) after the 2005 season is get good players in the Tampa Bay uniform. Heʼs given up some players i like, but i donʼt think itʼs because he gives up on them too early. He had to  [ Read More ]

When I started this blog last season, I added the section of posts you see above titled Questions from the Mrs.  Back then, my lovely wife watched every game with me and, almost without fail, asked me one insightful question about the game per night in her continuing desire to know more about baseball.  Perfect  [ Read More ]