Blog Posts For: June 2009

This team has the third best batting average in the league. This team has the second best on base percentage and slugging percentage in the league. This team has scored the most runs and has stolen the most bases in the league. This team averages more than a run more than their opponents. This team is leading the division with an absurd win-loss record, right? Wrong. This team is hovering around .500 and is in fourth place in the American League East. This is team is the Tampa Bay Rays.

A third of the MLB season has passed and the early season surprises have subsided. The Toronto Blue Jays unceremoniously fell from first place in the AL East after losing nine straight in the final two weeks of May. The Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff, other than Zack Duke, fell apart and the general manager quickly disappointed fans by trading Nate McLouth, firmly reestablishing the keen sense of doubt and depression at PNC Park. Plenty more inflated individual stats on every team deflated as the law of averages finally won again. Still, some surprises have remained, lingering, threatening to go from an early season trend to one of the dominant storylines of the year.

I like everyone else was excited by the possibility of watching the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers play in the NBA Finals. I relished the thought of watching LeBron James and Kobe Bryant do battle, I wanted to believe that this would be the passing of the torch from one MVP to another, and I wanted to see two players who were unstoppable defile the other team at will as the competitive stakes were raised. That reality is no more, the series will remain a hypothetical one, but I have just glimpsed into the future and seen something far more interesting, the transformation of the gentle giant into the beast whose hunger will devour all in his path.