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Guest Article: A Night at Tropicana Field, by Larry Bodin
By Administrator | July 1, 2008
Last night (June 30th), my wife and I attended the Red Sox - Rays game at Tropicana Field. I would like to share with you a few of the observations I had.
The Rays are for real. Teams should not underestimate their ability or they will take advantage of it. It appears to me that the Rays and Red Sox will be two of the playoff teams in the American League. Tampa is gaining confidence, getting reasonable pitching, and are quite dangerous.
The Rays fans were terrific. They were behind the team throughout the game and were well-behaved. Many of them dressed in Rays’ uniforms.
At Tropicana Field, there is a marvelous museum with free admission… it is called the Ted Williams Museum. It is located close to Entrance 1, the Right Field entrance. I recommend that anyone who visits Tropicana Field should allow time to visit the museum. It is an investment of time, as it is two stories high. Besides some great pictures of Ted Williams and the other great hitters, they have quite a bit of memorabilia, including bats from twenty-two (or so) of the players that have hit 500 HR.
The playing field at “The Trop” is small — about 320 feet down the line and 405 feet to straight center field. The stadium itself is small, the walkways around the stadium are exceptionally crowded during a game with a lot of attendees. The parking is terrible (it took almost 45 minutes to exit the parking lot).
(SOX1FAN NOTE: I wonder if Larry has ever driven to a game at Fenway Park and then tried to leave immediately after the game… in some parking lots, it takes forty-five minutes just to get out of your parking space)
The game itself was very good. A couple of points from the game.
James Shields was in complete control of the game until the fourth inning. He used about only thirty pitches through the first three innings. He weakened later.
Justin Masterson was wild — he threw nearly as many balls as strikes. As a result he walked batters, and those came back to haunt him. I believe he has to learn to throw more strikes earlier in the count to be successful.
Some of the fans (from both teams) became concerned when Masterson hit Aybar in the first inning… fortunately, nothing came of it and game finished without further incident.
I thought that Terry Francona made a managerial mistake by leaving Smith in the game for as long as he did. By the end of his outing, he had thrown twice as many balls as strikes. He should have been relieved earlier.
Further, trying to have Moss steal a base did not work out and may have cost them a run.
There are other things that happens during the game on which I could comment, but I’ll end this article with the one over-riding observation I had from the game: the Rays are going to challenge the Red Sox in the AL East. There is no room for complacency in Boston.
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