The Tampa Bay Rays will try to keep up their incredible march from worst to first when they face the Philadelphia Phillies in the 104th edition of baseball’s World Series.

Tonight’s opening game of the so-called Fall Classic is the first World Series meeting between the Phillies and Rays, two teams with the reputation of lovable loser. Last season, Philadelphia became the first club to register 1000 defeats, while the Rays, created in 1998, have finished last in the American League East nine of the past 10 seasons. Tampa Bay is in uncharted territory after winning 97 games this season to earn their first trip to the play-offs and the World Series. Not since the Atlanta Braves in 1991 has a team reached the World Series one year after posting the worst record in Major League baseball. Tampa Bay are attempting to become the first to make the incredible turnaround. “We’ve been like this all year,” said Rays starting pitcher Matt Garza. “We told ourselves people have been doubting us from day one. People were happy when we got our 71st win. They were excited when we got our 81st win, saying we had cleared the halfway mark. We kept going. People kept saying, ‘You guys are going to falter in August and September. You guys are going to falter when you face Chicago [the White Sox] in the play-offs. You guys don’t match up well against Boston [the Red Sox] in the league decider.’ “We have proved the doubters wrong the entire time. We just told each other to keep believing, keep fighting, keep playing the way we have played all year and good things would happen.” Tampa Bay appears to have history on their side as the American League teams have won 13 of the past 17 World Series games.

Heading into the World Series, the Rays have won 21 of their past 23 games, while Philadelphia have been victorious 20 times in the past 25 games. One of the biggest differences between the two clubs is the bullpen. The Rays pen struggled during the semifinals against Boston, while the Phillies bullpen was consistently strong against the Los Angeles Dodgers in their semifinal match-up. This is the Phillies first appearance at the World Series since 1993. They won it in 1980. Coming off six days’ rest after beating the Dodgers 5-1 to win their best-of-seven series in five games, they are hoping to avoid the rust factor. Pitcher Joe Blanton said they had great respect for the Rays’ batters, so he didn’t expect a letdown. “From what I’ve seen in the past, Tampa usually seem to be more of a speed team, although the past few games, they’ve shown off a lot of power,” said Blanton. “When you have both, it makes a line-up tough to face.”

Greg Heakes, Sapa-AFP

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.