March 9 is a special date in the history of the Tampa Bay Rays.
For that is the date back in 1995 that Tampa Bay was finally awarded a baseball team.
For years, Tampa Bay had been without a baseball club, and on this day, the people of that region were finally given what they wanted.
At the time, they were referred to as the Devil Rays, and it took them several years to finally become a contending squad, as for years they were one of the major laughingstocks of Major League Baseball.
Paul Driscoll of the Tampa Bay Times took to Twitter to remember the day the Rays, or Devil Rays, came into existence.
On this date in 1995, Tampa Bay was awarded a Major League Baseball franchise.#RaysUp pic.twitter.com/LTGhTdNmOn
— Paul Driscoll (@PDriscollTBT) March 9, 2022
A Long Time Coming
It took a long time, but the Rays are now finally a powerhouse.
It’s weird to think that so long ago, they were not a good team by any stretch of the imagination.
They were the ones scraping the bottom of the barrel for years and not coming anywhere close to contention.
But all of that changed in 2008 when they won the American League pennant and went on to their first World Series.
They lost that series to the Philadelphia Phillies in five games, but that would set up years of success for what had once been a losing franchise.
The Rays have been baseball’s favorite underdog story for a long time.
They’re a team in a small market with a relatively low payroll, and what makes them so special is not that they win, but rather, how they do it.
It seems as if every trade works out for them, even when they trade away their stars.
They get top young talent and return and then use that talent to build a winner, until the cycle repeats itself.
The Rays are truly a remarkable story, and are the prime example of coming from out of nowhere to attain success.
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