Rays' Success

(sigh) Another chunk of savings gone to making automotive repairs today. Yeesh. I think next time I'll lease.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Phillies are just one win away from a World Series title. You have to applaud the Tampa Bay Rays, however, for being only the second team in the history of baseball to go from last place one year to the World Series the next year. The only other team was the Atlanta Braves.

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SECRETS TO THE RAYS' SUCCESS THIS YEAR

You see how much good can happen when you take the "devil" out of your identity?

Finally stopped doing the opposite of what the winning teams were doing.

Their opponents could never wrap their heads around why a Florida baseball team needs a domed stadium.

They're actually *not* winning but we won't know that until another eight years have gone by and the Oliver Stone film comes out.

Had a little Hot Stove League fiddlin' contest last off-season and won their souls back.

Other team's players were too sissy to play in a hurricane warning.

Players were really just healthier, considering they play in Tropicana Field instead of, oh, say Coors Field, or Miller Park, or Busch Stadium.

Check out the ring on their new batboy, Frodo.

[Chris White's Top Five on Sports, with edits by Mark Raymond]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: Many investigative reporters are "muckrakers." The term refers to a tool that shovels and/or spreads a mixture of mud and manure. It is a rake for muck. The term was first applied to humans by John Bunyan in "Pilgrim's Progress," who used it to represent man's preoccupation with earthly things. Then Teddy Roosevelt quoted Bunyan in a 1906 speech, calling journalists that focused too intently on exposing corruption "muckrakers." These days, I believe, it tends to refer to anyone who "stirs up the muck" (exposes the less noble aspects of life). Sometimes that's good, sometimes not so much.

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