Tampa Bay Rays | Numbers
My friends Jay, Chris and I are working on a project where we rebrand all the teams from the World Baseball Classic, and this is my cap concepts for New Zealand and Spain
So this Rays fan tweeted at Elliot Johnson about being in the parking lot tailgaiting and asked if he wanted to play catch. So he did.
The worst is drawing a concept at the very start of the first class during a double header.
So I drew a concept over 3 hours and came out with the baby to this. Lets face it, the Rockies have an outdated set. But they should always use purple, just a refresher of a logo unchanged since the early 90s. I wanted to do a traditional look with modern flair. I’ve tried to do this before, but failed. I did realistic mountains on a diamond. I added some run off on the diamond to balance it all out. I did the font completely custom too. I dropped the R from the cap logo, because the Rockies are the only team that have the city and team name letter on their cap.
I hit a point where I thought I was done, but it needed something. I did draw a ball flying on my sketches but forgot about it. I wanted to do curved streaks, but got frustrated and went for angled. TURNS OUT it looked SO much better.
Traditional uniforms here. I did piping and purple. I put some design on the numbers similar to the Rangers. I had to do stirrups, for a guy named Jake on the Creamer boards pushing the Rockies to wear them. That was literally my thought process. The alt is a continued movement to have a white hat in the majors.
![I was watching a special on Game 162 last season after the Rays game last night, and I just sat back and remembered all the emotion that night.
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So last September sucked in my life. But the only thing that kept me going was the fact the Rays had come back from 9 games back to actually make it a challenge. The day before, the Rays turned a triple play and Joyce homered to make it come down to the last day. No one ever says that.
I’m very superstitious when it comes to baseball. I try all these things until something works, and then keep doing said thing until it’s over. Normally, I watch Rays games in my room on my laptop, but this game was the biggest in team history, and led me to be alone in my living room. My dad was on his way to North Carolina for a high school reunion, so I would have to watch the game myself. It was a shame, up until 2012, every Rays game I’d been to he was there, and we shared a lot of moments with this team growing up.
So the game started out unbelievably crappy. A 1-0 lead in the first, then a Texieria grand slam off David Price almost put it out of reach. Andrew Jones homered to make it 7-0. I was emotionally drained. I began watching Boston-Baltimore on MLB Network hoping that Baltimore could win just to give my team life. The game had a rain delay so it was back to watching the home team. By this point i had my computer off, sitting with my legs up on the left side of the couch. Mom is asleep, and my sister is in her bed watching it. In the 7th, Damon and Zobrist get hits. Then Kotchman gets hit. Slowly I feel like we might get a run or two. Fuld goes up and draws a walk, then Sean Rodriguez gets hit in the ribs. 2 runs pushed across with this terrible offense at times. BJ Upton hit the ball to DEEP left, and I thought it was gone, but would settle for a sac fly. The Rays were in striking distance, 7-3 with Longoria coming up. I hardly had a chance to think about things because on the first pitch he launched a ball to left center into the stairwell past a guy wearing a fake A-Rod jersey. I jumped off the couch and was screaming. I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t feel like the Rays would win this.
So the Rays were down 1 in the 9th. Two quick outs set up Dan Johnson with the biggest AB of the year. He had a 2-2 count and just hits a ball down the line into the corner, and I went NUTS when it went out. I ran into my sister’s room and jumped up on her bed and celebrated. I knew that the Rays would win, it was just a matter of when. The Baltimore game was on again, and I would watch that when I could. Slowly they began to get it together. It was about 1145 when Jake McGee got out of a 2 on no out situation after Longoria made a heads up play at 3rd. The O’s hit a ground rule double and that gave me hope. Then another hit tied it, and eventually Robert Andino hit his ball to Carl Crawford which he couldn’t handle and it was super fitting that the RedSox may have just blew their season that way. I was a huge Orioles fan in that moment. I switched over to SunSports knowing the Sox lost and just wanted to see the reaction at the Trop. Everyone was standing up cheering because the ball was in our court. Longoria brought it to a 2-2 count and hit a low line drive that JUST got up. I yelled and jumped off the couch and went to my sister’s room and just went nuts. They celebrated on the field for a long time, and I got to see the whole thing. I was up till 2 just soaking in the moment with highlights.
I went to game 7 of the ALCS, and saw them celebrate. I was there when the Rays won the AL East in 2010. Nothing compares to how that game ended, I couldn’t imagine what I would’ve done if I was there. But I have this memory of one of the best nights in baseball history.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8t4m22E8a1qe2dhgo1_500.jpg)
