Ray of the future

Tampa Bay has map showing way out of basement No, that's not a misprint at the top of the American League East standings. The Tampa Bay Rays - apparently no relation to the quickly forgotten Devil Rays of seasons past - own the best record in the majors and have put some distance between themselves and the teams they have been looking way, way up at for almost all of the franchise's brief history. This could turn out to be one of the great feel-good stories in recent memory, but if you're an Orioles fan, you're probably not quite sure how to feel about it. The Rays, after all, are the team that has been nice enough to provide the cushion under the struggling Orioles for the past decade, so it might be hard for some fans to watch them climb to the mountaintop while the Orioles remain stuck on one of the lower rungs of the... [read full story]