Like all Red Sox fans, I hate the Yankees. But I'm not a Red Sox fan.

And like most baseball fans (note "baseball" not Yankees), I hate the Yankees. But I'm this close (imagine me pressing my thumb and index finger together) to not being a baseball fan.

However, today, I give the dying sport another chance. That's because today's opening game between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays is being shown on ESPN (at
10 a.m. PST). And I will be on my couch wearing either my gray-and-green No. 19 or home white No. 37 jersey, eating peanuts and rooting for my home team, the Devil Rays (I'm from Tampa, btw).

It will most likely be the only game I watch all season (the last time in memory the Rays were on national TV, they got beat something like 19-3 against I wanna say the White Sox -- had to have been 4-5 years ago; I, unfortunately was at that game ... if I had been sitting in front of a TV, I probably would have flipped the channel like most of the country likely did that night).

But I will watch the whole game today. Mostly so I can learn who's playing on my team this year. (I feel like the Indians fans at the beginning of "Major League.") But it's also so I can do my patriotic duty and give America's Pastime three hours of respect before the rest of America passes it by.

From the lack of a salary cap to steroids, my once-favorite sport is really hard to watch, much less care about. Granted, if you thought it was tough to follow the league's perennially worst team when I had season tickets, you can imagine how tough it is living 3,000 miles away.

But I made the effort. Since moving to Fresno three years ago, I still have made it back to attend at least one Devil Rays game a season. When I lived in Chicago for a summer, I saw the first game of my team's interleague series with the Cubs at Wrigley Field. I was there, in the left-field bleachers, wearing a Rays practice jersey and on the cell phone with my father (watching the game on TV), who's telling me that all the commotion in the infield is Sammy Sosa getting ejected for corking a bat. Yeah, I was there.

And so it's tough. How does one of the biggest stars in the league cheat against my team? Against a team that has lost 100 games more times than the Yankees have won the World Series since their inaugural season. And is it any surprise the Yankees always win the division? In past years, they've had a salary of $210 million. My team? $30 million. (That's one-seventh the salary for all you math majors out there.)

So, I ask you: Is that the Yankees' fault? No. But when the disparity between the salaries of two teams in one division meets the parity between my interest in a game I once loved and my interest in rearranging my sock drawer, we have a problem.

What would I like to see? A salary cap (forcing the Yankees to cut their payroll in half). And if that means smaller market teams such as the Devil Rays get contracted, then that may not be the worst thing. I say this not as a Devil Rays fan, but as someone who would like to be a baseball fan.

In the mean time, I will have hope for my team's chances this year. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave fan.