I’ll admit,for most of this year’s season, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to baseball. My beloved Cleveland Indians, for reasons unknown, found themselves out of the playoff chase by June 1st. Maybe Travis Hafner was worried about my academics, and decided to take the year off so I could focus on school? (a lovely gesture Mr.Hafner, but I swear, if you do that again next season, I’m driving to Cleveland and punching you in the eye). Maybe its because Cleveland got their fat black guys confused, and accidentally gave Romeo Crennel (diabetus?) 4 starts in April, before seeing this mistake…and promptly trading the best pitcher in baseball to Wisconsin for Matt LaPorta, some shiny beads, and 3 Million in AIG stock (Bitter? Me? Naaah).

Whatever the reasons, my team stunk, and my adopted second team, the Washington Nationals, stunk even more. Instead of fanatically refreshing MLB.Com over the summer, I payed attention to other things, like the NBA off season, the LSAT, and Student Achievement (and student achievement).

Naturally, I was missing one of the most compelling stories in sports in years….the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Before 2008, I don’t really know a powerful enough superlative to describe how bad Tampa was. They were Washington Generals bad. Detroit Lions bad. Gigli bad. They had never placed higher than 4th in their division (the AL east has 5 teams), and had never won more than 70 games (MLB teams play 162 in a season). Nobody outside of the Tampa-St.Pete newspaper circulation zone could name more than 2 Devil Rays, unless your name happens to be Peter Gammons, or Dana.

And according to a lot of baseball “experts”, their immediate prospects for getting better were dim. Major League Baseball has no salary cap, so the “rich” teams in major media markets typically are the only ones who can sign big free agents. Tampa’s two main division rivals, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, have roughly the combined payroll of the GNP of Poland or Spain. Tampa Bay has to have their team dinners at the Golden Corral.

But wouldn’t you know it. Tampa dropped the “devil” from their name in the offseason, watched their young players mature in a hurry, and won 96 games, shattering their record, and winning the AL East. The New York Yankees missed the playoffs. If the story ended right here, it would still be heartwarming enough to make a made-for-TV movie on ESPN.

(just a little aside here, but if there was one thing that would make me *not* like Tampa right now, its the fact they changed their name. Devil Rays was awesome…but the Rays? That just makes me think of nine bumbling Ray Romanos. Ladies and Gentlemen, your Tampa Bay Fightin’ Situation Comedies!. Lame.)

But it didn’t end there. The Rays beat the Chicago White Sox handily, then beat defending champ Boston in a thrilling game 7 last night. Tampa blew a 7-0 lead in the 7th in game 5, and almost blew game 7, until their almost rookie closer, a kid from Vandy barely older than me, strikes out 3 batters, and sends the Rays into October Immortality.

(another aside…I’m now old enough where I start to get a teensy bit depressed watching professional rookie athletes. The hero of the ALCS was what, 22? Greg Oden is 19. Kevin Durrant is 19. I am 21. These guys are gazillionaries. I am writing facebook notes and going to Geological Sciences in a few hours. *sigh*)

Even if you don’t like baseball, how is this not awesome? Doesn’t everybody love an underdog story? I don’t think its possible to get any more underdog than this, unless the Columbus Clippers were suddenly allowed to compete in the playoffs.

Their opponent, the Philadelphia Phillies, are also not without a story. Philly fans like to bemoan the that their city appears to be cursed when it comes to sports. The 76ers are bad. The Eagles went to 4 straight NFC title games without winning a super bowl, the Phillies have lost more games than any other team in baseball history, etc. National sportswriters continue to broadcast this story, as if Philly, by virtue of being in the northeast, has a monopoly on sports misery.

Before I went away to college, I didn’t think much about the Phillies. They were another one of those irrelevant national league teams, like the San Diego Padres, that I might catch once or twice a year during a lazy summer day when the only other thing on TV was The Price Is Right.

But that changed when I went to American. American University likes to pride itself on being a highly diverse campus, featuring students from all over the country, world, and from diverse social and socioeconomic backgrounds. They neglected to mention that “diversity” at AU meant they had students from many different parts of Philly and Southern New Jersey. This was only the second time in my life that being from Ohio made me exotic.

The overexposure of all things Philly, New York and Boston did wonders to make me jaded towards all of their sports teams. Every setback by the Giants and Eagles was treated as some sort of natural disaster. I saw more Phillies crap than I did American University stuff. And for anybody from anywhere (except maybe Seattle) to complain to a Cleveland fan about suffering? I mean…really? Let me take your baseball team and move them to Mexico City. THEN we’re be able to talk. (Chicago, I know it sucks to be you, but you got Jordan’s Bulls for the better part of a decade. Our shining moment was the movie Major League)

So even though my guys are all golfing somewhere (or, in the case of Mr.Hanfer, working the batting cages, getting ready for next season. RIGHT??), I’m going to root for the Rays with the (nearly) the same vigor that I would for my own team. Small market kids catch fire and win the big one. I don’t think I would write a better sports story if I was allowed to make everything up. Its going to be a heck of a world series.

So, baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike, check out a game or two over the next week. After all, there’s only one October.