Good-bye, Rays. And Good Riddance.

Yeah, it was a bummer that the Tampa Bay Rays, formerly devils, could not knock off the Astros for our playoff-following pleasure.

It can't be denied:  your New York Yankees would have had an exponentially better chance to beat TB than Houston.

But you can take this to the bank:  it would not have been fun.

The Rays are about the dullest team ever to play the game.  You remember how Mike Hargrove used to be called "the human rain delay"?  Well, the Rays are 25 human rain delays.

Their clever invention of "the opener" has served to make the most important player on the field, the pitcher, virtually anonymous.  Their need to constantly put six, or seven, or nine or ten pitchers out there, even when they don't start with an "opener," has slowed baseball to a crawl, especially in the playoffs.

Beyond their interchangeable pitchers is...an anonymous, interchangeable team of role players, none of whom do anything especially well, and none of whom do anything very badly.  Hurrah.

The worst thing about the Rays is being forced to listen to all the encomia inevitably showered upon them by sportswriters and broadcasters alike—the moral superiority bestowed on them as a team of plucky overachievers.

Lost in all the blather is the fact that, as mentioned in this space a couple days ago, the Rays are only poor because they're run by a pair of former Goldman Sachs partners, who have hit upon a whole new business in which to ceaselessly bilk their customers.

Their fans have essentially been taken hostage, subjected to endless games played by unknown ballplayers in probably the most depressing major-league park ever built.  This is the baseball equivalent of waterboarding, visited upon the paying customers until they crack and approve whatever ridiculous extravaganza of a ballpark/condo village/theme park the brigands who own the team have demanded.

To their infinite credit, the locals have stood firm, simply boycotting most of the season.  Hence, another franchise in what should be the baseball-mad state of Florida is abandoned to corporate greed.

And the overall brand, product, or...what was it again?  oh, yeah:  game of baseball...is once again diminished.

Well, runaway, self-destructive corporate greed is par for the course in baseball, and today's America.    But it rarely comes attached to such tedium.

Rot in hell, 2019 Tampa Bay Rays.  And I mean that in the nicest way possible.