Friday, August 6, 2010

Who Are We? Not the Devil Rays, for sure...

The Tampa Bay Rays. It's been 2 years now since the dropped the "devil" from their names and decided to be known as just the Rays. Since then, they seem a little confused on finding exactly how they want to be identified. I get the play of the name. Florida has sun and the sun makes rays (a play I find a little strange for a team that plays indoors in what most consider the worst baseball stadium in MLB. The get no rays in there). I will give them credit. they are trying to make it work in Tampa. Why Tampa isn't behind them fully, I'll never know. As a Pirates fan, I would kill to get that team in the Black and Gold (Some sports writer wrote an article about that a couple months ago that MLB should fire everyone in the Pirates organization an then move the Rays to Pittsburgh and let that team play as the Pirates in the best ballpark in MLB. It begs for the big stage). Dreaming. Dreaming. And I'm back. Anyways, the rays went from this to their current version. They promptly made a World Series appearance. I'm of the thinking that the green color scheme they had before was a very good look. Also because green is soooo underplayed in MLB. Literally the Oakland A's are the only other team that uses it. So let's breakdown the Rays uniform combos:
1. Home white
2. Road Gray
3. Blue Alternate
4. Baby Blue Alternate

First thing I've noticed is they are totally committed to being the Rays. It's on all 4 of the jerseys. Where they seem confused it what to do with their alternate logos. Are they the sun rays or the "devil" rays? The fish ray logo is a jersey sleeve patch on the home and road uniforms. The sun ray logo is apart of the Rays logo and is in the outfield on their "grass" turf. So which are you, Rays? And they have a nice TB logo, why not use it more? So here are my quick fixes.

1. Choose an alt logo and stick with it. Fish, Sun, or the TB.
2. Come up with a Tampa Bay full logo to use on the road jersey.
3. One of the alternates, I'd say the baby blue, put the one of the alt logos, TB, sun, or ray, on the left chest.
4. Figure out where to better utilize the use of gold. They have it in there. It could be used more effectively.
5. Move the team to Pittsburgh and become the Pirates. No, actually I'd like to see one of their alt logos used on a cap to break up the monotony of the TB hat. It's nice but it's about finding more choices to sell.

The Rays need to get it together because their time is now. They have the star players. They've been to the World Series. They are arguably better than the Yankees and the Red Sox who are bigger payroll teams. The Rays are in the spotlight and they need to shine with their look.

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