Heading into the 2002 season, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were, to put it kindly, going through an awkward period. Their Hit Show experiment had failed spectacularly with three of the four members having parted ways with the ball-club. The other veterans they had brought in had failed to transition the club into a winner. Meanwhile, their expansion twin, the Arizona Diamondbacks, had won the World Series in 2001.
Attendance had been plummeting since the team’s first year in 1998 and with a lousy on field product there was little cause to believe it would get better.
The Devil Rays did have several exciting prospects in the pipeline.