Oh we've got trouble...right here in Tampa Bay*

My team of the day is the Tampa Bay Rays. This is another team that I (surprise!) know nothing about, so I turned to Wikipedia. And, I challenged myself to find some link to making me care about this team, by way of musical theater.

http://mlb.mlb.com/team/

Let's start with fun facts about the Rays - They were called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but a la the Washington Bullets their name was sanitized so that the team would become "a beacon that radiates throughout Tampa Bay and across the entire state of Florida."

Lame.

*Tampa Bay is not a municipality, merely a body of water. I consider this to be misleading. 

They play in Tropicana Stadium, and I like orange juice, so I guess that's okay.

But now I will attempt to connect the Tampa Bay Rays to me in some meaningful way....watch this:

Tampa Bay → The line from "Wells Fargo Wagon" (The Music Man): And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa..." → Shirley Jones was in The Music Man → Shirley Jones was from Charleroi, and was crowned "Miss Pittsburgh" in 1952→ I'm from Pittsburgh.

See? That one was kind of easy.

Alternative route:

Tampa Bay → The line from "Wells Fargo Wagon" (The Music Man): "And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa..." → Shirley Jones was in The Music Man with Robert Preston → Robert Preston was in the movie "The Last Starfighter", with which I was obsessed when I was in 5th and 6th grades (until Top Gun came out, and then Dirty Dancing) → In 2004 someone had the genius idea of making "The Last Starfighter" into an off-Broadway musical → I love musicals.

Ok, one more:

Tampa Bay  →  The line from "Wells Fargo Wagon" (The Music Man): "And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa..."  →  Shirley Jones was in The Music Man with Robert Preston  →  The song "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man includes the line ""ow they're gonna cover up a tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen."  →  Billy Joel also mentioned Sen-Sen in "Keeping the Faith" ["I took a fresh pack of Luckies and a mint called Sen-Sen"]  →  "Keeping the Faith" was on Joel's 1983 album "An Innocent Man"  →  Also on "An Innocent Man" was "This Night," where the chorus melody is taken directly from Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique →  I heard Sonata Pathetique the other day on those cable music channels in the 500s that I leave on so there's background for the baby and while on the "Light Classical" channel I found myself singing "This night will last for-eeeee-ver....Why is Billy Joel in my head?"  → I need to get out of the house more.

And....done.