Anybody who despises the current state of major league baseball, with its’ big-market team domination, has to be cheering for the Tampa Bay Rays to reprise their season of 2 years ago, when they shocked all the experts and wound up in the World Series. They are a solid young team with a great manager, Joe Maddon, and are off to a terrific start in the AL East. In order to stay where they are now, atop the division, they will have to hold off the top 2 poster children for big-market domination, The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are looking more and more like a team on the decline, but don’t count out the Yankees. They are a strong team that has had early-season injury troubles with a few of their older players – Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and now Andy Pettite. Power-hitting first baseman Mark Texiera has gotten off to a slow start also. The Yanks will most certainly make a run at some point and it will be interesting to see if the Rays can keep up with them.