Oops, They Did It Again

Remember when Britney Spears married Kevin Federline? That was pretty surprising. No one saw it coming. Of course, that was four years ago, and it no longer seems surprising. We have assimilated that little nugget of useless knowledge into our brains, and now the fact that a semivirginal pop star and her grungy backup dancer once exchanged solemn wedding vows seems utterly mundane.

So, if we can ultimately accept the fact that Britney and K-Fed would tie the knot, why can we not do the same for the poor Tampa Bay Rays? The Rays have been a contender all year and an undisputed first-place team for months, but sportswriters still love to run stories about how surprising they are, checking in every week with a "the Rays (!) are still in first!!!" update. Somehow, you don't find similar stories about the Chicago Cubs.

Never mind the fact that the Rays have been hot since day one. Never mind the fact that some analysts actually predicted this before the season began. To the media, the Rays have remained "surprising" for months, leading up to this little exercise in saccharine faux-shock from Jayson Stark, which appears on ESPN.com bearing the teaser: "The first-place Rays. Go ahead. Say it. It's still true."

The article itself isn't much better.

"Some things in sports, you can't quite explain. They don't seem possible. They don't even seem probable.

But they unfold before your eyes. So they must be real. They must be happening.

...

When your 5½-game September lead has disappeared, when you're getting one-hit by Josh Beckett into the seventh inning, when you're nine outs away from tumbling out of first place, you're supposed to be in trouble. Right?

But somebody forgot to explain that to these goofballs. Somebody forgot to tell these crazy dreamers from Tampa Bay that they're not supposed to be here. They're not supposed to be doing this. They're not supposed to keep on finding ways to toss banana peels under the Red Sox every time the champs seem poised to catapult past them into first place. Everybody in America seems to know that -- except the Rays."

Setting aside for a second the fact that this is terrible, terrible writing, the problem with this continued shock at the success of the Rays isn't that it's merely annoying, but that it's disrespectful to what will ultimately be a 95-win team. I'm willing to ignore the fact that some analysts did see this coming and grant that, at the beginning of the season, the Rays were a legitimate surprise. However, this far into their campaign, the Rays have proven themselves, and their wins should be treated as equally unsurprising as those of other great teams. When the Angels win, no one acts surprised or calls them "crazy dreamers," because they respect them enough to have seen it coming. What this gushing media prose really indicates is that, even this late into a very successful season, no one believes the Rays can do it. Stark's piece is explicit: "They're not supposed to be doing this."

After five months of great baseball, why the hell not?

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P.S. If Jayson Stark has any info on what makes Willy Aybar a "crazy dreamer" and, say, Paul Konerko a normal, boring, non-dreaming ballplayer, he can feel free to email me at journalismcliches@pooponboozer.com.