I Hope the Tampa Bay Rays Lose 100 Games This Season

And every other season that Joe Maddon is their manager.

St. Petersburg Times:

Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon on a mission to help growing Hispanic population integrate into hometown of Hazleton, Pa.

PORT CHARLOTTE — Manager Joe Maddon has a new cause.

Having worked extensively to help the homeless in the Tampa Bay area through his Thanksmas charity program, Maddon has now set his sights on his hometown of Hazleton, Pa.

In short, he wants to help integrate the growing Hispanic population (in excess of 10,000) into a seemingly reluctant old-school community to help keep the whole city from dying.

After meeting with Hispanic families during his holiday visit home, Maddon said he realized the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics there now are following the same path the European immigrants, including his own family, did generations ago but are not being welcomed.

So it takes Dominicans and Puerto Ricans to keep a crusty old white city from dying.  If that’s the case, why aren’t both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico great?  Why won’t Puerto Rico declare its independence from the imperialist rule of those crusty old white Americans and turn into an international superpower on par with the Dominican Republic?  (At the very least, quit relying on that crusty old schooler white American welfare.)  Why do Dominicans and Puerto Ricans have to go anywhere at all if they’re so great?  They can be great right where they are and not share their greatness with us crusty old gringoes.

More questions:  If the “old schooler” whites back in Hazleton thought all those PRs and DRs were revitalizing the city, why did the Mayor who wanted them out of the city, one Lou Barletta, win both the Republican and Democrat Party primaries for Mayor when he ran for his third term?  (He’s a Republican, and he won the Democrat primary with write-in votes from white Democrats, beating an ex-Mayor in the process.  Barletta did not declare himself a write-in candidate for the Democrat nomination because he was already a ballot candidate for the Republican nomination.  It was the city’s white Democrats who took it on themselves to write his name in.)  If the people in Hazleton’s Congressional district thought all these Hispanics could bring back all these “old schooler” white towns in PA-11, why did they almost turn out their deep-rooted Democrat incumbent (Paul Kanjorski) in 2008 for the aforementioned Mr. Barletta, in spite of Obama carrying the district with a 15-point margin?  And why did they finally do it two years later?

Joe Maddon should stick to managing baseball.

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