Here’s an interesting take, courtesy of eagle-eyed loyal reader Brad Nixon from the excellent Web site slate.com, on the Rays. It’s by Tim Marchman and compares the Rays to long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs.

The writer is correct. While the Rays don’t have the romance of the 100 years of futility that the Cubs do, folks around here have been dealt a rough hand over the years by the grand olde game too.

We here at the News Mother Ship have been asked a lot in recent days by national media about the Rays and the baseball history in Tampa Bay. It brought back involuntary ticks about the drawn-out battle just to get a team, including the flirtations with the Chicago White Sox, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants and, of course, two rounds of expansion. And all that was before we had the decade of despair once the Rays actually began play.

Sort of makes you appreciate the summer we just had, and might be yet to come. Check out this take from a Boston Globe blog by Adam Kilgore on the Rays-Red Sox rivalry.

And here’s one I just love. It’s by the insanely talented Ray Ratto of San Francisco or, in this case, CBS Sports. It’s his take on the bad rap Tampa Bay gets for not properly supporting a team that went 10 years without ever topping 70 wins.

Once you plow through that, another eagle-eyed reader named Ben Henderson (yes, he’s related; I pay his college tuition) sent this link along from a Rick Reilly column on ESPN.com about the struggle former Buc John Lynch is having with retirement.