They were born, in their tilted white dome, back on March 31, 1998. It seemed like such a great moment in baseball time back then, that day the Tampa Bay Devil Rays started their long-awaited adventure in the land of big-league ball.



There were 45,369 lucky folks crammed into every seat. There were T-shirts flying off the racks. There were local heroes like Wade Boggs and Fred McGriff in the middle of their lineup.



This was their longtime vision, come to life, in the land of hope and dreams. And it was every bit as beautiful as they’d imagined … other than the part where they gave up 11 runs and 18 hits to the Tigers that day.



But you know what no one would ever have imagined? That a mere 21 years later, we would be looking at this very same franchise — fresh off an 11-year run in which they won more games than any team except the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cardinals — and asking:



Now what?



Seriously. Now what?