Son of a gun. Doggone if the team with the second-lowest payroll in the bigs, — but not for long - a team that is a tale of two cities, and more, a team with a manager who quotes a French scholar and who enjoys fine art and sculpture as well as good wine, short-cropped gray hair that approaches being hawkish… doggone if the Rays of St. Petersburg and Tampa aren’t closing in on the World Series, some of which would be played in Tropicana Field, an unusual design in shape that appears to be leaning, one way or the other.

Oh, yes, the Rays — no longer the Devil Rays — to get to the next opponent next week, must first beat the potent Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. Think what a deal that would be, the Rays playing for it all with the often-maligned dome as their home. Trop boss Rick Nafe said he can pack 37,000 in for the playoffs, then could pack, or stack, 42,000 in for the Series. There are no plans for seats on the rafters, not yet.

Yes, indeed, Sir Joseph Maddon, the academic manager of the Rays, who studies art and wine but who listens to The Beatles as well, has taken his young team into the minefields that are the playoffs and is counting on abilities unaccustomed to such pressure, and he’s unskeptical of it.

He believes in great truths — like Vince Lombardi’s What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You — and use the wisdom of innocence to maneuver past troubled ways. He will also counsel with a quote of philosopher Albert Camus. Major League writer Mike Bauman quoted him as emphasizing, “Integrity has no need of rules.”

If that is your credo, says this rare big-league manager, you need no other. Such a quotation is unlikely to be posted in any other major league dressing room. But, here’s one, that of Joe Maddon, who would prefer a pass to the Uffizi in Florence to view The David sculpture again, than to a World Cup match in the same great northern Italian city.

Hard not to join the corner of Maddon now. He’s paid his dues, at all levels, including here. He’s easy to like, clearly easy to follow. He has that young bunch of Rays kids now coming together like never before.

This team is not hero-less, but there seem not yet to have yielded any prima donnas. Oh, maybe one began to bud, but seems to have been nicked. Surely this team-first approach is for the moment real, and accepted. There are a few who will provide the long ball now and then, but there is not just one or two who will.

Evan Longoria surely looks like a big-time slugger of the future, but he’s only 22. And, the $44 million payroll is low, they say. Can’t imagine $44 million being low for anything, though, compared to some in the markets of the big cities, it is — well, check the New York Yankee payroll.

Here’s what the Rays do have, aside from their self-made, achieving manager: speed, defense and pitching, and no long-term contacts, except for the seven-year deal just struck with Longoria. He needs to join the junior chamber. Saw him at a South Florida Bulls game the other night. He’s done. He’s home. He’s ours. He’s going nowhere.

The Rays have youth, speed and defense. Haven’t had that before. They are second in stolen bases. Maddon has made them skillful in defense, in base running, stealing bases and ownership loves his crowd appeal. He sat one coming star down recently for lack of hustle. It was obvious when the player was loafing. The dome crowd saw it immediately. They also have a little spit. Had a swing or two at each other the other night. The season is long. Familiarity sometimes frays nerves. Maddon fixed it.

Maddon knows about persevering and patience. He was a kid out of Hazelton, Pa., north of Philadelphia. His mother, Bennie, 74, still waits tables at the Third Base Dugout restaurant. Ball park there, just like it is Lou Piniella Field in West Tampa, is Joe Maddon Field in Hazelton.

Maddon was signed for college at Lafayette as a shortstop and pitcher but made himself a catcher. Had minor-league playing time at Idaho Falls, then did this and that in administration in the minors and majors, emerging as a coach for the California Angels, and for the Rays when he became the manager three years ago. So, he has experienced, but with an inside view, that which the Tampa Bay loyalists have all of their baseball lives.

Joe Maddon has led these grand Rays out of the darkness and onto the high road with a talented, big-eyed, ambitious team of believers, looks like. In these different times, it won’t be this way again, some suggest.

“Once in a lifetime,” didn’t one of Joe Maddox’s philosophers say?

Pull this off, and it will make the shot — tough as it will be — for a new ball park about 100 times easier.