Rays drop the Devil
November 14, 2007 – 8:08 am Posted by bryan in » Christianity, MLB, youth sports
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As Joe Posnanski pointed out in his blog on Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have officially changed their name to the Tampa Rays. Joe wonders if the people responsible for this were fans of the Devil, picketing outside Tampa Bay’s offices because the ball club was giving Satan a bad name.
Along with the new moniker comes some new duds too. (pictured below). The interwebs finest uniform critic, Paul Lukas, rendered his verdict on the new uniforms on his blog (Uni Watch), saying only this: zzzzzzzzzzz. I guess he’s not a fan.
I think the uniforms are an upgrade from those detestable forest green nightmares the Devil Rays have been wearing for the past few years. Then again, you could dress these guys up in bright red devil outfits, complete with horns, pitchfork, and cloven hooves, and it would still be an upgrade from last year.
As far as the name change goes, I’ve heard message board chatter claiming this change was pushed through in response to Christians who were opposed to the word “Devil” in the name. Seriously, I doubt that had anything to do with it. Clearly the team is desperate for a new identity, but the sad thing for them is, it’s going to take a lot more than a new name to make that happen. They’re still going to be finish a million games behind the yankees and/or red sox if they don’t spend more money on players.
This whole name change thing reminds me of when my younger brother Josh played youth soccer for a team that had black jerseys. They were called the Black Knights until a few of the soccer moms decided they didn’t particularly like that name. Under intense pressure (no more orange slices at halftime), they changed the name of the team to the Black Attackers. True story.
And for the record, if there are any Christians out there who spent more than 2 seconds caring about the word “devil” in the name of Tampa Bay’s baseball team, please shoot me an email so i can respond to you with a list of five hundred thousand more important things to care about.
Tags: devil rays, the devil
