Sunshine Rays

Tampa Bay Rays play at the orange juice sponsored Tropicana Field, which is about an hour’s straight shot over a handful of bridges from our house in St. Petersburg.

St Pete is famous for having an average of 361 days of sunshine each year, but now it might have a world champion on it’s hands.

I hate that American’s call their national champions world champions, but baseball’s World Series does at least contain one Canadian team. Go figure, as the American’s would say.

Anyway last night in St. Pete the locals celebrated their team, the Tampa Bay Rays (they do play looking over Tampa Bay) as they made it to their first ever baseball ‘World Series.’

Ironically the sunshine state has had more success at ice hockey (3 Stanley Cups), yet the nation’s summer pastime has eluded them. The other winter team here, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, have also twice won the Super Bowl.

At this point I must mention the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the iconic soccer team that Addick Eddie Firmani led to, I don’t know what they called it in 1975, but let’s go with the NASL World Series!

Tampa Bay Rays will meet the Milwaukee Brewers in baseball’s ‘World Series.’ The Brewers are also one of five franchises never to have won the big prize.

All the same, the Rays have only been in existence for 28 years, those poor Chicago Cubs fans had to wait 108 years to end their drought.

Game 1 of Rays v Brewers series is scheduled to begin this Friday in Milwaukee. It’s a best of 7 series and the first two games are up north. Back in St. Pete on Monday and Tropicana Field, that only re-opened this season after a $60 million restoration project following severe damage from Hurricane Milton.