Let’s go back to 1988. I was an elementary-age kid living near the construction site of what would become the Suncoast Dome in St. Pete. Rumors of a baseball team were circulating. Would that ever happen? My family lived below the poverty line, so going to a game wasn’t even on my radar. But maybe we could have our own team. Then, in 1998, the league expanded. I was in Kentucky and headed to college. But the Devil Rays were my team, even if I couldn’t watch most of the games. By the mid-2000s, I could stream them on a new service called MLBtv. The Devil Rays had my heart. To this day, Crime Dog remains my favorite all-time player. I got married in 2006, and my wife and I moved to Southwest Florida in 2008. I had been following that miracle season from Indiana, but now I lived here. There’s a whole story behind how I got a World Series ticket, but I ended up at the one game we won against the Phillies. Fast-forward to today. My wife and I are taking all four of our kids to their first World Series game to watch our team, the Tampa Bay Rays, play in our favorite place on earth: Tropicana Field. That poor St. Pete kid from the 1980s couldn’t have imagined this day. Baseball is more than a game for us. It’s where we spend time as a family and make memories. Seeing the Trop torn to shreds two years ago was devastating, like watching part of your life get ripped apart. Now we’re back, and the tilted dome stands as a symbol of our community’s resilience. Today is emotional for me, in all the right ways. Of course, I hope we win, but I’ve already won. The people I love most are living a dream with me that I never knew was possible. Let’s do this, Tampa Bay. #ForTampaBay – at St Petersburg, FL

Let's clinch this thing! #ForTampaBay – at St Petersburg, FL