If The World Was Ending, The Rays Would Have Known

Today is December 21st, 2012. We are still alive. Everyone knows that all the discussion about the Mayan calendar ending today and that the world was going to end was vastly overblown by the media, but there had to be a good second where you believed it might be true. I woke up today and went outside and saw it raining like crazy- hurricane weather- when nothing like that was expected to come along. For a moment I wondered whether this really was the end- then I laughed at myself for considering that and kept walking.

If we really wanted to remove any doubt in my mind that the world was not about to end, we should have just looked at the way the Rays have conducted themselves this offseason. Obviously the Rays have every scenario accounted for as they figure out how to run their ballclub, and of course that includes an end-of-the-world scenario. The Rays clearly didn’t think the risk of the world ending was so high. If they did, why would they trade James Shields? If there was any pitcher who was going to be there until the end of the franchise, it was Shields, the most dependable pitcher they’ve ever seen and a player who played a major role in the Rays’ unbelievable run of the last five years between his pitching and his leadership of the Rays pitching staff and the entire clubhouse. It’s going to be amazing having Wil Myers in a Rays uniform, but who would care about the future if the world was ending?

How about the Evan Longoria extension? It’s not like the extension has an end-of-the-world out-clause! The Rays would be paying him 136 million dollars over the next 10 years when there would be no more baseball, and I don’t think the Rays would consider that a wise investment. Clearly the Rays would have known the world was ending and structured the contract accordingly with specific language in the case of a world-ending cataclysm.

Don’t worry- if you haven’t had enough of whole this end of the world craziness, in another 15 or 20 years some ancient civilization’s calendar or some interpretation of some holy text is going to say that the world is going to be ending. Will it really happen next time? Probably not, but if it does there will be a dead giveaway- the Rays will be carrying out their offseason accordingly.