Professional Sports in Tampa
Tampa, Florida is the home of many great cultural establishments. It also happens to be the home of some professional sports teams such as the Buccaneers and the Tampa Bay Rays, just to name a couple. The Buccaneers are the city’s major league football team and the Rays are its Major League Baseball team. As with other cities with outstanding professional sports teams the residents in and around Tampa are extremely supportive of and devoted to their teams. They have even been known to book the rooms in a hotel Tampa USA so the opposing team’s fans doesn’t have access to them. Of course that might also be a legend, but it does explain the lack of alternative colors at most of the major sporting events.
The Buccaneers played their first season as part of the 1976 expansion plan and while the country celebrated the bicentennial Tampa also celebrated its new football team. They play their home games at Tampa Stadium, which it continues to be informally called though after 1998 it is officially called the Raymond James Stadium. The team has won one Super Bowl Championship, which occurred in 2002, which was also the year they won their only Conference Championship. The current starting quarterback for the team is Josh Freeman, who was selected by Tampa in the 2009 NFL Draft.
The Tampa Bay Rays are actually based in St. Petersburg and are a member of the American League’s Eastern Division. The team is relatively new and was only established in 1998. Since that time they have played their home games at Tropicana Field. They won their first division title in 2008, which was their best record to that time. At this time the team has retired two players’ numbers. Jackie Robinson, who wore number forty two and retired in 1997 as well as Wade Boggs who wore number twelve and retired in 2001 are the only players to have achieved this status to this date.
June 19th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Interesting take on the local teams. I never heard of the Rays before.