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This 50-year Cubs fan is rooting for the Rays

By David Cranfill, Special to the Times
In print: Thursday, October 2, 2008

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After 50 intensely loyal years, I don't care if the Cubs win one game in the baseball playoffs, let alone make it to the World Series. I have a new team, the Tampa Bay Rays.

My old love affair with the Cubs began in 1958 when a friend and I took a commuter train to Wrigley Field several times a season. We would buy seats in the outfield bleachers for less than a dollar and enjoy a glorious afternoon of baseball.

But the Wrigley Field experience has changed. One afternoon this year, I paid $135 dollars apiece for upper deck seats halfway down the right field foul line. The only way I could get those tickets was through one of the brokers with fists full of tickets who line the streets around the ballpark.

As I shelled out $540 for my daughter, two grandchildren and me, I reasoned, "Why speculate with the uncertainties of oil, gold and Wall Street when you can make a huge profit by peddling tickets to Cubs games?"

One of my favorite Wrigley Field experiences occurred in the mid 1970s when I saw the Cubs play the Dodgers on a sultry August afternoon. Soon after the game began, the young man sitting next to me bought a frozen chocolate malt. After taking several bites, he noticed that I was eyeing his treat. He dug deep into the cup with his wooden spoon, chiseled out an oversized mound of confection and said, "Here. Have a bite."

So there we sat, two baseball fans a generation apart, strangers with nothing in common except the team we mutually loved, sharing good conversation and the same chocolate malt in the same historic ballpark. This was more than Cubs baseball at its best. This was life at its best.

But my old team of five decades has become a shamelessly commercialized Goliath. The team has the seventh highest payroll in baseball. Harry Caray's stirring rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game has morphed into an opportunity for marketers to hawk their latest album, film or book. And fans can't buy a ticket at the box office on the day of the game because corporations and scalpers have snagged them all.

To put it bluntly, today's Cubs remind me of the excesses of Wall Street. They've compromised the fundamentals in favor of making lots of money.

So after 50 years of unwavering loyalty, my singular allegiance to the Chicago Cubs has been challenged by a newfound love for an unlikely mixture of rookies, blossoming stars and major league cast-offs.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been able to take a modest payroll (second lowest in baseball) and through managerial cunning, chemistry and character mold it into a championship team. They're applying a Main Street approach to winning, a strategy I can relate to.

My introduction to the Rays took place in the mid 1990s when my job took me to the Tampa-St. Pete area for weeks at a time. Pitch by pitch, game by game, I slowly began to warm up to the team. I even began to appreciate the integrity of baseball as played at the Trop, where important games are never decided by a lousy hop on suspect turf or the fickleness of a 30 mph wind.

I particularly remember one night at the Trop when the Rays got swept by the behemoth Boston Red Sox, another big-money team. As boastful Red Sox fans waved their brooms in the air, I recall seeing diminutive Jason Tyner standing at first base next to the burly David Ortiz. The apparent advantage was overwhelming.

It was at that precise moment that I became a Rays fan.

I've often been asked who I'll be for if the Cubs play the Rays in the World Series this year. Will it be David or Goliath? Main Street or Wall Street?

Here's a clue: Would anybody in the Trop like to share some good conversation and a cup of Carvel ice cream?

David Cranfill is a partner in an Indianapolis marketing firm who has directed dozens of television commercials in the Tampa Bay area and spent many evenings at Tropicana Field.