The Tampa Bay Devil Rays have been in existence for an eyeblink in the scope of baseball history, but this fact alone is not enough to explain all their woes. The Arizona Diamondbacks are also a creation of expansion, but they have a World Championship and they look like a major league team. The Florida Marlins, just an afternoon's drive from Tampa Bay, also have one championship under their belt, and as I write this, find themselves in first place in the NL East.

The Rays, by contrast, were in first place for a few days this season, when they began the year sweeping the Detroit Tigers, when the Tigers simply could not do anything right. The euphoria was short-lived, and the day I write this, the bedeviled Rays have lost fourteen straight. Fill in historical stats and anecdotes here that demonstrate that, yes, it really is as awful as it sounds...

I didn't realize how wide the inequity was between the Yankees and Rays until I watched a recent matchup between the two teams on television. I get most of my baseball through the radio. There are many players I could not describe to you--some I couldn't even tell you if they were black, brown, or white. (I laid eyes on Darren Oliver for the first time at Fenway Park last month.) As such, until I saw them, I hadn't realized that when they say the Rays are really a Triple-A team, they really mean it.

The A's are young, but they look like major leaguers. They strut and they hit and they sometimes stumble, but they look like they belong on the same field with the Mariners and Yankees. The Rays are young, and there's not much else you can say about it.

I enjoy watching the minor leagues. Over the years I've been to a bunch of minor league parks. I've seen rookie ball, short-season A, double-A ball. Watching the young guys is fun, the games are good, and I enjoy watching the kids putting it together.

So it was kind of fun to watch the Devil Rays--but only kind of. Because although it's nice to see these young pups running around on the field and having their occasional golden moments (see Jason Tyner's leaping catch at the wall of Shane Spencer's double), it's not that much fun to watch them overmatched by the Yankees night after night. (That must be what Devil Rays fans think, too, since when the Yankees come to town, there are more Yankees fans in the house than Rays fans. The same thing happens when the Red Sox arrive.)

Youth is exciting. Look at the electricity that Alfonso Soriano has created in New York. How about Albert Pujols last year? To watch the blossoming of a young player is one of the game's greatest pleasures, where a fan's long attention, game after game, is rewarded. The Orioles know that. Last year, as Cal Ripken was preparing to retire, it was not the old man who appeared on advertising banners around the city; it was three rookies with the slogan "The Kids Are Alright."

But the Orioles had their veterans, too. They had their mix of mature men. Now Cal is gone, but there is David Segui, Scott Erickson. With the Devil Rays there is Greg Vaughn. When Vaughn, mired in a .105 slump, was sent in to pinch hit in the ninth, it looked like they were sending their bench coach to the plate. After the long string of fresh-faced skinny kids, the gray in Vaughn's beard stood out. In a game where you're young when you're in your twenties and old when you're in your thirties, Vaughn looked like he was fifty, especially facing the ageless enigma of Orlando Hernandez on the mound.

Did Vaughn strike out? Work the count? Break out of his slump? Well, no. El Duque hit him on the hand with a pitch. Not every moment in baseball is an analogy for life. But my point is the same: the Rays are young and it is baldly obvious when you see them play. The lone veteran on the team only highlights that contrast even more. What I wonder is, with so few mature stars in their midst, how will the youngsters ever learn that cock walk to the plate, that assured sling of the ball across the diamond? Because of course the Rays are not all eighteen, twenty. Their average age is twenty seven. That's Derek Jeter's age, but you would never mistake Jeter for a rookie. Come to think of it, even in his rookie year Jeter didn't look much like a rookie.

What the Rays lack is not age itself, but confidence. Like minor leaguers at every level who know they do not "have it made," the Rays tiptoe around the AL East, just waiting for someone to send them back down. In the age of contraction and fourteen game losing streaks, we have to hope that they put it together before that day comes.