Hightlights the new major league baseball franchise that began play in Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1998.

A revised Team Spirit Baseball edition featuring the Tampa Bay Rays that chronicles the history and accomplishments of the team. The Team Spirit series paints an engaging, detailed yet accessible picture of professional sports teams. By focusing on the history, great victories and memorable personalities, the books have an enduring quality that will not go out of date quickly. The text is enhanced with plenty of full color photographs as well as reproductions of vintage trading cards and team memorabilia.

Tampa Bays interest in baseball spans from the sports earliest days to the regions win of a national league franchise in the last decade of the 20th century. Hosting more major league spring training games than any other region inthe United States, Tampa has been home to a number of spring training camps, for teams including the Chicago Cubs and the Washington Senators. St. Petersburg has played host for the Philadelphia Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles, among others. Not only does this region have a rich professional baseball history, but a thriving Little League and recreational league tradition. Stars, both young and old, have played for these teams and have brought glory to their hometown. Both St. Petersburg and Tampa formed their own local teams when the minor league was created in 1919, but Tampa Bays dream for a major league team of its own finally came true in 1995, when, at a meeting of baseball owners in West Palm Beach, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays became the thirteenth expansion team in major league history.

What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

This title introduces baseball fans to the history of the Tampa Bay Rays MLB franchise. The title features informative sidebars, exciting photos, a timeline, team facts, trivia, a glossary, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

"Presents the history, accomplishments and key personalities of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. Includes timelines, quotes, maps, glossary and website"--Provided by publisher.

The history of the Tampa Bay Rays professional baseball team from its inaugural 1998 season to today, spotlighting the team's greatest players and most memorable moments.