Rays seem ready to dump Devil

[Gothamite]

Still, some continue to call the ballclub the Devil Rays, and that just eats at team president Matt Silverman.

They are the RAYS, as in sunshine, not Devil Rays, as in docile bottom feeders, which the team has been for all of its first 10 years.

"We're no longer the bottom feeding fish," Silverman said during a luncheon last week. "We're much more about the energy of the sun."

Then you shouldn't put the fish on every player's sleeve, Matt.

You make a half-assed change, trying to have it all ways, you shouldn't be surprised when your brand ends up muddy.

[The_Admiral]

Perfect. Now that's dropping the hammer.

[TheGodfather]

Everyone has a devil of a time with Rays' name

Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008

Admit it, you still find yourself writing "2007" on your checks, and you might have turned on NBC last Thursday night to catch the latest episode of "The Office" when you realized - DUH! - writer's strike.

Some habits are just plain hard to break.

Do something year after year, and it becomes second nature, like calling the Houston Texans the Houston Oilers and Dolphin Stadium Joe Robbie.

Or the Tampa Bay Rays the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The devil has been exorcised, though some people seemed to have missed that story, which was tough to do, considering the production staged by the team last November that included a fashion show in downtown St. Petersburg to unveil the new uniforms and logo and a concert by actor Kevin Costner and his band.

Still, some continue to call the ballclub the Devil Rays, and that just eats at team president Matt Silverman.

They are the RAYS, as in sunshine, not Devil Rays, as in docile bottom feeders, which the team has been for all of its first 10 years.

"We're no longer the bottom feeding fish," Silverman said during a luncheon last week. "We're much more about the energy of the sun."

Nonetheless, people are having a difficult time adjusting to the change, and it's not just newspapers and magazines writers and Internet bloggers. Team employees still slip on occasion.

Witness the gaffe by pitcher James Shields. During the news conference to announce his mega contract, Shields first referred to the ballclub as the Devil Rays, but quickly covered his mistake to his credit and to his wallet.

It's a $1 fine for any team employee caught uttering the word devil while referring to the Rays.

"We were in need of ridding ourselves of the habit and wanted to do it in a playful way," Silverman said.

Hence the "Drop the Devil" boxes around Tropicana Field to collect the fines.

So now we know how the team came up with all the money for the offseason spending spree.

"No," Silverman said, "it's still pocket change."

And the money goes to the team's foundation, he was quick to note, and not Carlos Pena's bank account.

Silverman has also written a form letter, which is sent to any publication or Web site or TV announcer who erroneously puts the devil in front of the Rays. In it Silverman asks for a $1 donation and warns repeat offenders will be hit with a stiffer penalty.

You wonder if they had this much trouble in the Bronx when the Highlanders became the Yankees or in Beantown when the Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots.

And that brings us to Silverman's next quest.

"Too many times we're referred to as the Tampa Rays," he said.

Put the Bay back in Tampa!

It seems people have - ready for this? - a devil of a time with that name, too.

Wow, silverman is a bigger moron than I thought.

Why such a harsh wanting to get rid of the Devil from Devil Rays? He's going crazy about it.

He's a new business guy who knows nothing about baseball, and comes in and changes everything to girlie colors and a MOD EDIT name and wants the devil gone from it?

He's a joke and so is the orginization.

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

[BallWonk]

Wow, silverman is a bigger moron than I thought.

Why such a harsh wanting to get rid of the Devil from Devil Rays? He's going crazy about it.

He's a new business guy who knows nothing about baseball, and comes in and changes everything to girlie colors and a MOD EDIT name and wants the devil gone from it?

He's a joke and so is the orginization.

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

OK, that's the obvious reason why it would have been better to choose an entirely new name. But give the guy a bit of a break: When a company changes its name, employees need to use the new name. A $1 fine jar is pretty tame by comparison with some corporate name changes I've seen.

As to the colors being "girly," um, what? If you don't like the color blue, that's fine; there's no arguing with taste. But calling blue-on-blue "girly" is just ridiculous. Light blue is actually the color that stands for "not a girl" in our culture.

Anyway, if you actually want to tell the owner what you think, it isn't that hard. There are these things, see, called "phone books," and in them you can find the names, phone numbers, and addresses of all the businesses in a given area. Using such a reference, one might easily discover that a letter addressed to the owner at 1 Tropicana Drive, St. Petersburg, FL, 33705, will reach the team.

I can't answer for every team, but in my experience many teams, and MLB itself, are relatively accessible, especially to physical letters sent by mail. There's a decent chance with most teams, or even letters sent to the commissioner, that your addressee will actually see and respond to your letter. Maybe not so much if all you have to say is, "You're a doofus, you stupid doofushead," but even reasonably civil letters of complaint can have an impact.

[TheGodfather]

Wow, silverman is a bigger moron than I thought.

Why such a harsh wanting to get rid of the Devil from Devil Rays? He's going crazy about it.

He's a new business guy who knows nothing about baseball, and comes in and changes everything to girlie colors and a MOD EDIT name and wants the devil gone from it?

He's a joke and so is the orginization.

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

OK, that's the obvious reason why it would have been better to choose an entirely new name. But give the guy a bit of a break: When a company changes its name, employees need to use the new name. A $1 fine jar is pretty tame by comparison with some corporate name changes I've seen.

As to the colors being "girly," um, what? If you don't like the color blue, that's fine; there's no arguing with taste. But calling blue-on-blue "girly" is just ridiculous. Light blue is actually the color that stands for "not a girl" in our culture.

Anyway, if you actually want to tell the owner what you think, it isn't that hard. There are these things, see, called "phone books," and in them you can find the names, phone numbers, and addresses of all the businesses in a given area. Using such a reference, one might easily discover that a letter addressed to the owner at 1 Tropicana Drive, St. Petersburg, FL, 33705, will reach the team.

I can't answer for every team, but in my experience many teams, and MLB itself, are relatively accessible, especially to physical letters sent by mail. There's a decent chance with most teams, or even letters sent to the commissioner, that your addressee will actually see and respond to your letter. Maybe not so much if all you have to say is, "You're a doofus, you stupid doofushead," but even reasonably civil letters of complaint can have an impact.

Oh thats cool acting like a jackass about it.

No other team drops one word from the name and then acts like that word is some racial slur and that it isn't allowed to be used. I really cannot even begin to comprehend the stupidity of that idea. I've never seen a team use a money jar or anything like this. What is this middle school?

As for the colors, they are absurd. The light blue with a sunburst is quite possibly one of the MOD EDIT today. The green was very popular and everyone loved it. The change was uncalled for, and all this was the continued BS from the new leaders, if you can even call them that, on this team.

And I highly doubt the idiot will see my letter, let alone read it. It would be waste of time. Some minimum wage joker in the office would see it and then toss it.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

As for the colors, they are absurd. The light blue with a sunburst is quite possibly one of the MOD EDIT today. The green was very popular and everyone loved it. The change was uncalled for, and all this was the continued BS from the new leaders, if you can even call them that, on this team.

Now I know to never take any of your posts seriously ever again. Thanks for saving me some time.

And I highly doubt the idiot will see my letter, let alone read it. It would be waste of time. Some minimum wage joker in the office would see it and then toss it.

Actually, it will most likely be an intern. And yes, from my experience, they are forwarded onward. You send something to a professional sports organization, someone somewhere will eventually read it.

[Lee.]

He's a new business guy who knows nothing about baseball, and comes in and changes everything to girlie colors and a MOD EDIT name and wants the devil gone from it?

He's a joke and so is the orginization.

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

Oh thats cool acting like a jackass about it.

The ironing is delicious.

[Brian in Boston]

Frankly, Matt Silverman is acting like a tool with his over-the-top response to the fact that the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity hasn't yet caught on with either the public or members of the organization.

The fact of the matter is that the rebranding of the franchise has been mishandled from the get-go. First, there's a legitimate question as to whether the "Devil" in the Devil Rays name needed to be jettisoned to begin with. It strikes me that there was nowhere near as huge a call for the Devil portion of the name to be dumped as some folks would like us to believe. Rather, the new ownership and management of the team was trying to distance itself from the less-than-stellar competitive track-record that had come to be associated with the Devil Rays brand. My own personal opinion is that said track-record isn't reason enough to dump the identity you entered Major League Baseball with. After all, professional sports teams experience periods in the competitive doldrums. That's part and parcel of operating a team. If teams changed their brands every time they went into competitive dry spells, there'd be no sense of history, tradition or continuity in pro sports. In Tampa Bay's case, ownership/management's goal should have been to build an organization capable of revitalizing the Devil Rays brand through success on the field.

Instead, they committed to paying more attention to making cosmetic changes to the team's brand. It's their money, so they can do as they please. However, their second blunder in the rebranding process was to make the rather anemic change of simply dropping the "Devil" portion of the Devil Rays name. If the Devil Rays' history was such a marketing burden as to necessitate changing the team's name, ownership/management should have made a clean break with the past and adopted a completely new brand identity. Simply going from Devil Rays to Rays invites confusion as to whether a new brand identity has been adopted at all.

The branding problems caused by the rather minor Devil Rays-to-Rays name shift have been exacerbated by ownership/management's third mistake: retaining the manta ray logo as a secondary mark on the sleeves of their uniforms. Ownership/management claims that they're now embracing the "sunshine" and "energy from the sun" definitions of the Rays name, yet they continue to feature a depiction of a so-called "bottom-feeding fish" on their uniforms. They're guilty of muddying their own brand identity by sending out contradictory visual messages as to what the name Rays stands for. Further, explicitly stating that they believe their old (or is it?) namesake creature was a "bottom-feeding fish" is tantamount to reminding their target audience that their product has sucked since the team entered the marketplace. While that may well be true, you gain nothing by so blatantly reminding your audience of the fact.

Finally, the logo package that ownership/management adopted to accompany the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity is, at best, uninspired and mediocre. At worst, it is so horrible that it borders on Clip-Art. Say what you want about the Devil Rays name, the manta ray logo that accompanied it was far better than the "TB" and "Rays" typemarks, as well as the "sunburst" device, that make up the Rays' current logo package.

Bottom line? Matt Sullivan and Devil Rays' management - oops, I meant Rays' management - have saddled themselves with trying to make a "silk purse from a sow's ear". The franchise has botched every aspect of its rebranding. In fact, the Devil Rays-to-Rays rebranding is a case study in what not to do when launching a new identity for a pro sports franchise. The end result is that it is proving exceedingly difficult to effectively communicate the fact that the team is going by a "new" name. Ultimately, having Sullivan pitch a hissy fit over the fact that fans, media outlets and - yes - team employees have been slow to adopt the new name isn't going to do anything to speed-up the process.

[TheGodfather]

As for the colors, they are absurd. The light blue with a sunburst is quite possibly one of the MOD EDIT today. The green was very popular and everyone loved it. The change was uncalled for, and all this was the continued BS from the new leaders, if you can even call them that, on this team.

Now I know to never take any of your posts seriously ever again. Thanks for saving me some time.

And I highly doubt the idiot will see my letter, let alone read it. It would be waste of time. Some minimum wage joker in the office would see it and then toss it.

Actually, it will most likely be an intern. And yes, from my experience, they are forwarded onward. You send something to a professional sports organization, someone somewhere will eventually read it.

Yeah, because saying that is sooo terrible that a professional mens team is now named after beams of sun. Give me a break. If you cannot take my posts seriously because of my opinions on the Girlie Rays then too bad for you.

He's a new business guy who knows nothing about baseball, and comes in and changes everything to girlie colors and a MOD EDIT name and wants the devil gone from it?

He's a joke and so is the orginization.

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

Oh thats cool acting like a jackass about it.

The ironing is delicious.

Ah yes, my opinion of the joke of a team makes me a jackass.

Frankly, Matt Silverman is acting like a tool with his over-the-top response to the fact that the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity hasn't yet caught on with either the public or members of the organization.

The fact of the matter is that the rebranding of the franchise has been mishandled from the get-go. First, there's a legitimate question as to whether the "Devil" in the Devil Rays name needed to be jettisoned to begin with. It strikes me that there was nowhere near as huge a call for the Devil portion of the name to be dumped as some folks would like us to believe. Rather, the new ownership and management of the team was trying to distance itself from the less-than-stellar competitive track-record that had come to be associated with the Devil Rays brand. My own personal opinion is that said track-record isn't reason enough to dump the identity you entered Major League Baseball with. After all, professional sports teams experience periods in the competitive doldrums. That's part and parcel of operating a team. If teams changed their brands every time they went into competitive dry spells, there'd be no sense of history, tradition or continuity in pro sports. In Tampa Bay's case, ownership/management's goal should have been to build an organization capable of revitalizing the Devil Rays brand through success on the field.

Instead, they committed to paying more attention to making cosmetic changes to the team's brand. It's their money, so they can do as they please. However, their second blunder in the rebranding process was to make the rather anemic change of simply dropping the "Devil" portion of the Devil Rays name. If the Devil Rays' history was such a marketing burden as to necessitate changing the team's name, ownership/management should have made a clean break with the past and adopted a completely new brand identity. Simply going from Devil Rays to Rays invites confusion as to whether a new brand identity has been adopted at all.

The branding problems caused by the rather minor Devil Rays-to-Rays name shift have been exacerbated by ownership/management's third mistake: retaining the manta ray logo as a secondary mark on the sleeves of their uniforms. Ownership/management claims that they're now embracing the "sunshine" and "energy from the sun" definitions of the Rays name, yet they continue to feature a depiction of a so-called "bottom-feeding fish" on their uniforms. They're guilty of muddying their own brand identity by sending out contradictory visual messages as to what the name Rays stands for. Further, explicitly stating that they believe their old (or is it?) namesake creature was a "bottom-feeding fish" is tantamount to reminding their target audience that their product has sucked since the team entered the marketplace. While that may well be true, you gain nothing by so blatantly reminding your audience of the fact.

Finally, the logo package that ownership/management adopted to accompany the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity is, at best, uninspired and mediocre. At worst, it is so horrible that it borders on Clip-Art. Say what you want about the Devil Rays name, the manta ray logo that accompanied it was far better than the "TB" and "Rays" typemarks, as well as the "sunburst" device, that make up the Rays' current logo package.

Bottom line? Matt Sullivan and Devil Rays' management - oops, I meant Rays' management - have saddled themselves with trying to make a "silk purse from a sow's ear". The franchise has botched every aspect of its rebranding. In fact, the Devil Rays-to-Rays rebranding is a case study in what not to do when launching a new identity for a pro sports franchise. The end result is that it is proving exceedingly difficult to effectively communicate the fact that the team is going by a "new" name. Ultimately, having Sullivan pitch a hissy fit over the fact that fans, media outlets and - yes - team employees have been slow to adopt the new name isn't going to do anything to speed-up the process.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

You should foward that to the DEVIL Rays management, it was very well put and very well written.

[So_Fla]

I wanna get in touch with that schmuck and write him a letter to give him a piece of my mind.

Don't give him too large of a piece, or you won't be able to finish your letter and get it mailed.

Why are you so worked up over this?

Since I see that you are from New York, enjoy your Yankees when they come to town and listen to them on the radio and just don't concern yourself with the Rays.

[timparry]

Frankly, Matt Silverman is acting like a tool with his over-the-top response to the fact that the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity hasn't yet caught on with either the public or members of the organization.

The fact of the matter is that the rebranding of the franchise has been mishandled from the get-go. First, there's a legitimate question as to whether the "Devil" in the Devil Rays name needed to be jettisoned to begin with. It strikes me that there was nowhere near as huge a call for the Devil portion of the name to be dumped as some folks would like us to believe. Rather, the new ownership and management of the team was trying to distance itself from the less-than-stellar competitive track-record that had come to be associated with the Devil Rays brand. My own personal opinion is that said track-record isn't reason enough to dump the identity you entered Major League Baseball with. After all, professional sports teams experience periods in the competitive doldrums. That's part and parcel of operating a team. If teams changed their brands every time they went into competitive dry spells, there'd be no sense of history, tradition or continuity in pro sports. In Tampa Bay's case, ownership/management's goal should have been to build an organization capable of revitalizing the Devil Rays brand through success on the field.

Instead, they committed to paying more attention to making cosmetic changes to the team's brand. It's their money, so they can do as they please. However, their second blunder in the rebranding process was to make the rather anemic change of simply dropping the "Devil" portion of the Devil Rays name. If the Devil Rays' history was such a marketing burden as to necessitate changing the team's name, ownership/management should have made a clean break with the past and adopted a completely new brand identity. Simply going from Devil Rays to Rays invites confusion as to whether a new brand identity has been adopted at all.

The branding problems caused by the rather minor Devil Rays-to-Rays name shift have been exacerbated by ownership/management's third mistake: retaining the manta ray logo as a secondary mark on the sleeves of their uniforms. Ownership/management claims that they're now embracing the "sunshine" and "energy from the sun" definitions of the Rays name, yet they continue to feature a depiction of a so-called "bottom-feeding fish" on their uniforms. They're guilty of muddying their own brand identity by sending out contradictory visual messages as to what the name Rays stands for. Further, explicitly stating that they believe their old (or is it?) namesake creature was a "bottom-feeding fish" is tantamount to reminding their target audience that their product has sucked since the team entered the marketplace. While that may well be true, you gain nothing by so blatantly reminding your audience of the fact.

Finally, the logo package that ownership/management adopted to accompany the "new" Tampa Bay Rays identity is, at best, uninspired and mediocre. At worst, it is so horrible that it borders on Clip-Art. Say what you want about the Devil Rays name, the manta ray logo that accompanied it was far better than the "TB" and "Rays" typemarks, as well as the "sunburst" device, that make up the Rays' current logo package.

Bottom line? Matt Sullivan and Devil Rays' management - oops, I meant Rays' management - have saddled themselves with trying to make a "silk purse from a sow's ear". The franchise has botched every aspect of its rebranding. In fact, the Devil Rays-to-Rays rebranding is a case study in what not to do when launching a new identity for a pro sports franchise. The end result is that it is proving exceedingly difficult to effectively communicate the fact that the team is going by a "new" name. Ultimately, having Sullivan pitch a hissy fit over the fact that fans, media outlets and - yes - team employees have been slow to adopt the new name isn't going to do anything to speed-up the process.

Silverman just sent you a form letter - get that $1 ready

[KJTALBOT]

Blah, blah, blah. Rays have been bad. stupid owner. blah, blah.

Whatever.

Let's talk logos.

I have been saying this for years, but when the Florida Marlins become the Miami Marlins, the next day, the Tampa Bay Rays will become the Florida Rays. Book it.

PS - The Rays have the best minor league system in baseball. Even if they don't win now, they are an exciting team to watch.

[Gothamite]

In this case, talking about the Rays' stupid management includes talking about the logos - they're the ones who insist that nobody reference the fish they sewed on to the sleeve of every single player.

It's that bizarre, muddy double-think that will continue to mire this franchise in mediocrity at best.

[boardname]

To weigh in, I'm sure this has been said a million times already: I still look at the new pictures and go, "um.. who?". Part of that is because it's brand new, but part of it is just because they're so damned boring. There's nothing really wrong with them, but not a whole lot really right, either.

I miss the green.

[BallWonk]

To weigh in, I'm sure this has been said a million times already: I still look at the new pictures and go, "um.. who?". Part of that is because it's brand new, but part of it is just because they're so damned boring. There's nothing really wrong with them, but not a whole lot really right, either.

I miss the green.

Exactly. The new Rays unis aren't bad. They're just not any good. C-minus work. And a definite downgrade in terms of color scheme, if not necessarily in terms of actual use of colors on the uniforms. Despite the uniform mediocrity of the Devil-era Rays, dark green and bright blue could have been an outstanding color set.

[TheGodfather]

To weigh in, I'm sure this has been said a million times already: I still look at the new pictures and go, "um.. who?". Part of that is because it's brand new, but part of it is just because they're so damned boring. There's nothing really wrong with them, but not a whole lot really right, either.

I miss the green.

Exactly. The new Rays unis aren't bad. They're just not any good. C-minus work. And a definite downgrade in terms of color scheme, if not necessarily in terms of actual use of colors on the uniforms. Despite the uniform mediocrity of the Devil-era Rays, dark green and bright blue could have been an outstanding color set.

C-?!

Thats generous.

I mean a ray of sunshine...seriuosly, what kind of NEW BEGINNING WE NEED....is that?

It's a joke and keeping the name partially in there was a joke.

I would not have boycotted had they changed to the St. Petersburg Pelicans or something like that, although changing the name at all was stupid.

There was no need for a name change, they could have made new jerseys and hats and everything without changing the freaking name!

[KJTALBOT]

They dropped the Devil a little too soon.

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/02/18/1...vil-toad-fossil

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Tampa Bay Devil Toads!

[Gothamite]

I mean a ray of sunshine...seriuosly, what kind of NEW BEGINNING WE NEED....is that?

It's a joke and keeping the name partially in there was a joke.

I would not have boycotted had they changed to the St. Petersburg Pelicans or something like that, although changing the name at all was stupid.

There was no need for a name change, they could have made new jerseys and hats and everything without changing the freaking name!

True enough, but they've been slowly changing the name for a while. It was 2001 when they first claimed that the word "Devil" was responsible for their pathetic attendance, scaring away all those good churchgoing baseball fans who were just waiting for a chance to support Tampa Bay baseball without having to sell their souls to Old Scratch in the process.

I take your point about a whole new name being less problematic. The real issue I have is that they're trying to have it both ways, a new name with the old identity. They claim to be named after rays of light, but they still have the acquatic creature sleeve patches.

Better to start anew than this wishy-washy half-assed rebrand.

[JetsLuvver]

Am I the only one who is glad that the old green/black/purplish-blue puke-inducing color scheme is gone? They really should have just recolored the old set and come up with a new logo.

[TheGodfather]

I mean a ray of sunshine...seriuosly, what kind of NEW BEGINNING WE NEED....is that?

It's a joke and keeping the name partially in there was a joke.

I would not have boycotted had they changed to the St. Petersburg Pelicans or something like that, although changing the name at all was stupid.

There was no need for a name change, they could have made new jerseys and hats and everything without changing the freaking name!

True enough, but they've been slowly changing the name for a while. It was 2001 when they first claimed that the word "Devil" was responsible for their pathetic attendance, scaring away all those good churchgoing baseball fans who were just waiting for a chance to support Tampa Bay baseball without having to sell their souls to Old Scratch in the process.

I take your point about a whole new name being less problematic. The real issue I have is that they're trying to have it both ways, a new name with the old identity. They claim to be named after rays of light, but they still have the acquatic creature sleeve patches.

Better to start anew than this wishy-washy half-assed rebrand.

Yep I agree.

And I remember when they decided taking Devil of all of their merchandise was a wise idea. It was just a stupid ploy to sell and make more money, and of all the people I talked to who were church goers, the Devil part didn't offend any of them.

It's all a joke just like the whole orginization, and if I'm ever rich enough I'm going to buy the team and rename them the Devils.