Ex-Rays revel in winning feeling
By MARC TOPKIN
Published October 5, 2006
NEW YORK - In the midst of celebrating the clinching of a playoff spot Saturday, Toby Hall popped a cork and took aim at Mark Hendrickson and Julio Lugo, two other former Devil Rays now wearing Dodger blue, to make sure they marked the occasion properly.
"We came from drinking champagne at 70 wins (in 2004) to spraying champagne all over our heads because we were in first place and going to the playoffs," Hall said. "This whole atmosphere, this experience, I never really knew this side of baseball. ... I could have 101 losses and be back in Tampa, or be in first place and in the playoffs. They did me a favor."
As excited as he was for Wednesday's NL division series opener despite being limited to a reserve role, Hall - a Ray since being drafted in 1997 - said he felt bad for the players still with Tampa Bay, and for the fans, and he questioned whether they will ever have a winning team.
"You're striving to get where we are at here, but there is no shot at it - ever," Hall said. "What's so tough is that you're going day in and day out and you're dealing with, 'You're not going to win, you're not going to win the division, you're not going to do any of that.' Then you hear rumors about them trading (Carl Crawford) and Rocco (Baldelli) - there shouldn't even be a team. ...
"I've been there so long, I live there, you try to root for them. You try to root for a turnaround. You root for the fans, you root for the people that live there, so they can at least like baseball there. But it's sad to see that it's the same, if not getting worse."
Lugo, who was unhappy to be dealt (after declining to sign a contract extension), wondered how committed the Rays were to winning since they keep trading their better players. (Yet he said he would consider re-signing with the Rays as a free agent after the season.)
"We had a good group of younger guys they could have kept for a long time," Lugo said. "It seems like they get good players and then they deal them away. If you want to win, you can't do that."
Lugo and Hall said one of the starkest contrasts is how the Dodgers expect to win, and make moves accordingly, and the Rays knew they couldn't, and sometimes acted like that, too.
"Here, they play to win," Lugo said. "The biggest difference is the way they do things here; the organization is different, the players think differently."
"When you play (in Tampa Bay), it grates on you," Hall said. "Now that I'm here and I know that every at-bat counts and every pitch matters, it's almost like getting called up to the big leagues again. It really is."