Phils know meaning of true suffering

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Tropicana Field isn't much to look at, either within or without, and until this season, it was an improbable setting for a World Series.

But baseball, a game replete with probabilities and statistics, is most interesting for the things that happen unexpectedly. The Tampa Bay Rays, nee Devil Rays, are the champions of the American League, which is of great and somewhat belated interest to the citizens of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region.

Well to the north, in a city that knows far more about expected failures than unexpected successes, the citizens of Philadelphia are also celebrating, cheering the return of the Phillies to the World Series after a long and largely deserved 15-year absence.

The Series begins tonight at the Trop, a hastily conceived municipal project with a roof slanted like a misaligned trash-can lid. The baseball will probably overcome the setting, however, with the Phils starting young lefthander Cole Hamels in Game 1 as the team attempts to collect just the second World Series title in its 126-year history.

The last time the Phils were in the World Series, the opponent was not the Rays. That is because the Rays did not exist in 1993 and would not wing their way into the deep waters of major-league baseball for another five years.

Down here, they like to mention that it has been such a long wait for a good team, even for a mediocre team, that local baseball fans deserve a championship.

When the sun sets golden on the Gulf of Mexico each evening and the trade currents carry softly across the palm trees, perhaps it is difficult to understand the concept of true suffering.

Philadelphians could give the fans here a lesson. It must be said that the Rays did have a losing record in each of their previous 10 seasons and had the worst record in all of baseball in five of those seasons.

They were ignored at home, routed on the road, and viewed as a way station for has-beens and never-will-bes. Suddenly this season, in a transformation built around pitching, speed and defense, not to mention a manager from Hazleton, Pa., who likes to quote Kipling, the Rays became something very different. They held off the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox to win the American League's Eastern Division title and did so again in a seven-game league championship series.

The locals were so jazzed by this turn of events that fewer than 30,000 turned up on Sept. 15 for the opener of a crucial series with the Red Sox, and none of the games in that series came close to being a sellout.

Now, there are Rays fans everywhere, however, with Rays hats and Rays shirts and Rays flags flying from the tinted windows of their monster SUVs. The World Series might even sell out.

So, there will be little patience in the Cradle of Liberty for the complaints of the long-suffering Rays fans. To be a Phillies fan is to know suffering the way dogs know tree trunks.

The current team is the culmination of a recent rise toward respectability. Aside from the one-year blip of the 1993 team - which went to the World Series but lost in six games to the Toronto Blue Jays - the Phillies had been stubbornly incompetent for a quarter-century until this group arrived.

It is a likable team built around a core of young players who were nurtured in the farm system, with a sprinkling of outsiders to complete the team, the last of which were acquired by retiring general manager Pat Gillick.

You will read a lot about how the Rays define the word team, because the component parts don't look like much when disassembled and spread around the garage floor. But, put together, the Tampa Bay roster has an engine that has gotten the Rays a long way very quickly.

That is true, but the Phillies are far more than their reputation as a team of pure sluggers would suggest. There is power in the middle of the lineup from second baseman Chase Utley, first baseman Ryan Howard, and leftfielder Pat Burrell, but the Phils won the National League pennant because they had enough balance to pitch well when their offense stuttered and enough adaptability to create runs when home runs were not sailing over the fence.

This Phillies team - regardless of the Series outcome - will take its place alongside the best teams in franchise history. If it can produce a championship, there might even be room next to the 1980 team, which is forever captured in rose lighting and soft focus for its singular accomplishment.

All of that promise begins tonight under the translucent dome of Tropicana Field, down on the artificial playing surface where history will find an odd location to conduct its business.

The Phillies aren't turning up their noses, though. Here will be just fine. On Oct. 22, playing baseball is a good thing no matter where.