An interesting news story recently began circulating here in New York City, after someone spotted a bunch of rays — the fish — swimming in Newtown Creek, one of the city’s most notoriously polluted waterways. The wildlife sighting was fun, and it’s a promising sign that recent Newtown clean-up efforts may be succeeding. But my big takeaway from the story was the revelation that a school of rays is collectively known as a fever. As in, a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a pod of whales, a fever of rays.
Naturally, this got me thinking about MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays. Although they excised the “Devil” from their original team name in 2007 and made their brand identity more solar than piscine, they still have the ray logo swimming along on their jersey sleeve. A marketing slogan like “Catch Rays Fever” seems like it would be a natural, right? The promotional campaign could even be called the Fever Pitch!
And here’s another wrinkle: As you may know, Rays fans love their cowbells, a tradition that dates back to 2006, when Saturday Night Live’s famous “More Cowbell” sketch was shown on the team’s scoreboard. And what is the signature line in that sketch? It’s when Christopher Walken says, “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!” So that’s another connection between “fever” and the Rays.
Despite all of this, some basic Googling couldn’t turn up any evidence of the Rays ever using “Rays Fever” or any similar promotional slogan. Then again, I don’t watch Rays games on TV or follow the team on social media — could they have been pushing the “fever” angle all along and I just didn’t realize it?
So I emailed the team a few days ago and asked if they’d ever taken a “fever”-ish marketing approach. They didn’t respond (dealing with the MLB trade deadline was apparently more important, go figure), so I rounded up a bunch of longtime Rays fans on the internet and asked if they could recall the team ever leveraging the “fever” angle. They all said no.
Really? If anyone from the Rays is reading this, I strongly suggest that you take steps to remedy this longstanding oversight. Think of the possibilities: A fever of live rays swimming in a thermometer-shaped aquarium! Ticket discounts for families or groups who come to the ballpark dressed as a fever of rays! Staffers who dress up as doctors and roam the ballpark diagnosing fans with Rays fever! Christopher Walken throwing out the first pitch!
It’s all there for the taking, people. You just have to get together and swim toward it — feverishly, of course.
Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.
I'm trying to think of a way to say my comment that won't potentially set off a string of replies that won't go anywhere useful, but I don't know if that's possible. I'll try to say it in a roundabout way such that by not using a few keywords, it might avoid some issues:
Tampa Bay Rays marketing meeting, November 2019:
"Hey, a group of Rays is called a fever! Let's make our marketing campaign for 2020 'Catch the Fever!'"
"Yeah, 'Catch the Fever in 2020'! That'll be great! I can see everyone getting real excited about catching the fever around mid-March."
Did Paul de-manta speak to the manager of the department?