When Did Tampa Bay Get A Professional Baseball Team?

How about those Rays? For baseball enthusiasts in these parts, the Tampa Bay Rays' first-place standing this late into the season is something we've never experienced. Are you a believer yet? Probably not, but this is fun to watch.

The Rays - formerly the Devil Rays - Major League Baseball team has the best record in professional baseball so far this year. It's early, of course, but usually the Rays are already out of it at this point in the season. Playing in the stacked American League East usually finds them already in the cellar, watching the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox rolling through everyone. But not this year.

With a record as of Tuesday of 31-20, no other MLB team has done better. This is incredible, considering that the team finished the season with the league's worst record in 2007.

The timing of this streak is questionable, with a big push under way in St. Petersburg for a new stadium. Oh well, fans don't care, they just want a competitive team.

It will be interesting to see if Rays fans start filling Tropicana Field. In Miami, where the Florida Marlins play, fewer than 10,000 people come to games. And the Marlins are a fine team that has won the World Series twice in about 10 years. Go figure. It might have something to do with sitting in that outdoor stadium during sweltering days and evenings. At least the Trop is domed and climate controlled.

When the Rays play the Yankees and Red Sox, there are more fans supporting those teams attending than Rays fans. Will that all change if the Rays keep winning? We hope so. The talented young team is good at all the positions it needs to be to contend throughout the season. Still, there's that feeling that it all will go up in smoke in the next month or two for many Rays fans. Perhaps it will, but for now, we're believing and hoping the Rays have turned a major corner with the franchise.