Rays can't stay young forever

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By GARY SHELTON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 5, 2001

Take me out to the ballgame. Give to me many thrills. It's grand to see a young ballclub. Now it can afford to pay bills.

Everybody sing!

Yep, most of us sure are giddy to see the new look of the Devil Rays. Especially the team accountants. The team is younger! The payroll is smaller! The post-game buffet is a box of Trix. Whee! Any moment now, I expect a parade to break out celebrating the fact that the Rays were able to get out of $11-million worth of contracts of their own making.

Everybody dance now!

In the meantime, try not to notice that we have been shuffled into the side room with Muhammad, Jugdish and Sidney.

Royalty has come to the Devil Rays. Unfortunately, it's Kansas City Royalty, not to mention Pittsburgh Piracy and Montreal Exposure. The Rays have retreated to the shallow end of the baseball pool. Whether they will ever try deep water again is anyone's guess.

It's easier to look at the Rays these days. With their youth has come a new energy, a vibrancy. The game seems to mean more to these kids than it did their older, richer predecessors, as if the players are somehow still too fresh, too pure, to know how to put the game on cruise control. It's a lot more fun to watch Toby Hall or Brent Abernathy ripen than it is to watch the rot from Vinny Castilla or Gerald Williams. Watch a kid make a mistake, and you can imagine him getting better. Watch a 12-year pro do the same thing, and all you imagine is him growing richer.

History tells us, however, that when a team talks of youth, what it is really saying is cheap. And what it is buying is time. When a team retreats from high salaries with the gusto of the Rays in recent weeks, when the two highest salaries on the team are Greg Vaughn and Rat the security guard, it also sends a warning about the future. The team is young and cheap now. But when the choice is no longer between too old and too young, when the Rays have hard decisions to make about players in their prime, will the Rays still be young and cheap? In five years? In 10? Is tomorrow a promise, or it is merely a tease?

In baseball, graduating from a have-not to a have is a difficult transition. Often, the teams that are selling youth today will be selling the same thing tomorrow. Usually, one five-year plan begets another, until a team seems doomed to the cycle. You know why good teams trade prospects? Because they can always remember where they left them five years from now.

Take Kansas City, where the Royals just turned loose of a talented young player such as Jermaine Dye. Take Pittsburgh, where they said goodbye to Jason Schmidt, or Montreal, where they said goodbye to Ugueth Urbina.

In such towns, they are eternally giving away players. Every year, there is a fourth of July clearance sale in which yesterday's hope is sent away in favor of tomorrow's dream. It is the most vicious cycle in sports, a town watching a player grow strong and graceful then heading off to the lights of the big city. After a while, it has the feel of a minor-league team seeing its stars called up by the majors. In the economic insanity of baseball, there is no other choice.

Now that these cities are Tampa Bay's roommates, is this our fate? Even as you watch these kids take their precious first steps in the major leagues, that's the uncomfortable question. Once the Rays grow their own stars, will they be able to keep them? Or, in a couple of seasons, are the Yankees and Braves and Red Sox going to come sniffing around for Steve Cox and Ryan Rupe and Joe Kennedy? Once Jason Standridge and Josh Hamilton and Carl Crawford are developed, are they bound to depart?

Not necessarily, says John McHale, the chief operating officer of the Rays.

"There is a cycle that some markets find themselves in that's troubling," McHale said. "That is not what should happen or must happen here. I don't have enough experience under my belt here, but I'm confident that (retaining players through arbitration and free agency) will happen. I think there is every characteristic in this market to be on the "have' side of the divide. This can be a competitive club if it's done right."

You can debate for hours whether this franchise or its fans have been more disappointing to the other. There hasn't been much to be interested in, and there hasn't been much interest. Also, the other way around.

That said, there is only one way out. The young players have to be good enough to spark interest, which has to translate to more bodies in the building, and more cash in the coffers. The team and the town have to grow up together into something that cares sufficiently about baseball. That way, the Rays have a fighting chance to hold on to the core of their youth.

"Revenues have to come from someplace," McHale said. "But with the number of players we have who have from zero to three years of experience, it gives us a little breathing room to endear ourselves to our fans."

Look, the most special thing about watching a young team is the belief that it will not last, that someday, it will grow into something worth your attention. None of us wants to think the Rays are training players for someone else. None of us wants to think of the youth movement in 2004, and the next one in 2008, and another one in 2012.

The Rays are silly if they think anyone is going to applaud a team for saving itself from its own generosity. Sports doesn't work that way. Fans want the manager's job to be easier, not the paymaster's.

For now, it's easy to buy into a future with the kids.

In the long run, just hope the Rays aren't renting.

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