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Tribe to face top team, including Wadsworth native Sonnanstine, on Thursday
By Stephanie Storm
Beacon Journal sportswriter
Published on Wednesday, Jul 09, 2008
Could it be the name?
The name Tampa Bay Rays sounds snappier than Tampa Bay Devil Rays, not to mention less demonic. The Indians might want to give it a try. Chief Wahoo never has been politically correct anyway.
Perhaps the best way to start cleaning up the ashes of this aborted 2008 Indians season is with a look to the promises of a fresh start next year with a more marketable moniker.
Such as the Native American Houdinis — as in one season they're within a game of the World Series, the next they're up in smoke before the All-Star break.
Of course, baseball folks outside of the Sunshine State keep waiting for the magic to wear off on baseball's best team to date, for the real Tampa Bay baseball team to appear.
But for the first time in the team's 11-year existence, the Rays' fast start isn't an illusion.
Indians fans (what's left of them anyway) will see for themselves beginning Thursday, when the Rays arrive at Progressive Field for a four-game weekend series featuring local product Andy Sonnanstine.
The right-hander from Wadsworth enters his Thursday start with a 10-3 mark and 4.31 ERA in 18 games this season — only the Rays' third pitcher in franchise history to collect 10 wins before the All-Star break.
The Kent State product doesn't dazzle opposing batters as much as he simply out-wills them.
''I'm a very competitive person,'' Sonnanstine told MLB.com after getting his 10th win, and fourth in a row, against Kansas City on Saturday.
''So I kind of have a chip on my shoulder every time I go out that I've got to prove to myself I can do it.''
Seems like a majority of the Rays players buy into the underdog mentality.
At 55-34, they own the best record in the major leagues, as well as a three-game lead in the American League East Division over the Boston Red Sox, an opponent the Rays recently swept.
Tampa Bay won its season-high seventh consecutive game Sunday, before losing Monday to the Kansas City Royals and Tuesday to the New York Yankees.
''The culture here in the past had been if we'd won two or three games in a row, that it was OK to lose a couple,'' Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon told ESPN last week. '''We're at a point now where we don't like that idea or thought at all.''
Maddon has helped change the perception of the team from a lot of lovable losers to a club of solid pieces that forms a formidable whole to be reckoned with.
Perhaps no Rays fans are happier to follow the team's surprising success this season than Sonnanstine's parents, Wadsworth's Don and Joyce Sonnanstine.
Thanks to the MLB cable package, the Sonnanstines don't miss a Rays game. The retired couple settles in front of the television each night and doesn't miss a single pitch — not only their son's, but also from every other pitcher on the team.
''The team's turnaround from last to first is really the story,'' Don Sonnanstine said. ''Andy's just a part of it. We get just as excited seeing those dramatic games in the sweep of the Red Sox as we do when Andy pitches. The team's success is just something we've gotten sucked into.''
In fact, most of the couple's daily information about the team comes from TV and the Internet, as Don and Joyce go out of their way not to bother their son much about baseball.
''If I talk to him, it's usually catching him up on something else, like what's going on with his sisters or mom and I,'' Don Sonnanstine said. ''I figure he gets grilled on baseball all the time.''
Especially when his son happens to pitch for one of the hottest teams in baseball.
Stephanie Storm can be reached at sstorm@thebeaconjournal.com.
Could it be the name?
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