Tampa Bay Rays: Joe Maddon's Club Gets Superhero Treatment

Nerds!

The Tampa Bay Rays may just be my new favorite team this season after a couple of days of complete and unabashed dorky endeavors. 

On Monday, pitchers Fernando Rodney and Joel Peralta decided to wear gladiator masks in the dugout. If you think that sounds bizarre, take a look, via NESN. 

As you can see, it doesn't look the least bit bizarre and instead comes across as badass. Every bullpen in the nation must be looking into similar masks at the moment. 

I am sure of it. 

The Rays have won two games straight, so something must be working. With that in mind, manager Joe Maddon decided to take this whole thing up a notch recently. 

Sports Illustrated draws our attention to another report from NESN that includes a lineup to end all lineups. Who needs the Avengers when you have the 2012 Rays? 

Via Tampa Bay Rays Twitter:

"

Here is today's #Rays lineup - with superhero tags: twitter.com/RaysBaseball/s…

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) May 23, 2012"

The lineup may be filled with some hitters batting closer to .200 than we would like, but they only need live up to the Superhero counterparts filled in by Maddon. 

I am guessing the Rays will soon take a club trip to some regional Comic-Con to make the transformation complete. 

While Drew Sutton gets the magnificent Superman moniker, I am far more a Wolverine man myself. Congrats to Luke Scott for that. 

If we are looking for depth-chart discussions, Batman is far too low on the lineup. He needs to be batting third, so he can get some quality at-bats and get on base at a regular clip. 

Silver Surfer and his underrated power needs to be batting fifth. Sorry, Maddon, but you have some real explaining to do here. 

Follow me on Twitter and we can all nerd out together. 

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