The Tampa Bay Rays Have a Fever and the Only Prescription is More Cowbell

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The Tampa Bay Rays gotta have more cowbell.

Throngs of fans at Tampa's Tropicana Field ring cowbells during Rays games, an homage to the classic SNL skit featuring Will Ferrell as the cowbell player for 70s rock band Blue Oyster Cult and Christopher Walken as super-producer Bruce Dickinson (yes, the Bruce Dickinson).

The popularity of the cowbell at Rays games can be traced back to Rays owner Stuart Sternberg. Sternberg was looking for a fun gimmick for Rays game like the Anaheim Angels famous rally monkey.

Sternberg insisted that clips from the SNL skit be played on the stadium's giant videoboard during games.

The team then hosted several Cowbell Nights, where fans were given free cowbells. When an opposing players was at bat and had two strikes against him, the videoboard would ask the fans for "more cowbell" and fans would start clanging away. 

Over time, fans started bringing their own cowbells to games. One crazed fan, who refers to himself as the Cowbell Kid, often stirs up the crowd at games with a cowbell emblazoned with the Rays logo (he also regularly posts rants on YouTube while wearing a giant blue or yellow afro wig).

Whether the cacophony of cowbells will work on the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series remains to be seen. One this is for sure, if the Rays win it all, Rays players and fans will all be wearing gold-plated diapers (We don't even know what that means).