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Southwest Florida, meet the Rays. Rays, Southwest Florida.

The Rays play baseball up the road in St. Petersburg.

You may not be that familiar with the Rays.

Perhaps it’s because in the past they’ve been known as the Devil Rays. Or perhaps because they just haven’t been very good.

This year however, the Rays are in the World Series. Even so, people here are slow to embrace them, preferring in some cases to support their opponents, the Philadelphia Phillies and in many others, the Rays’ most recent victims, the Boston Red Sox.

So it’s time to familiarize yourself with Tampa Bay’s Boys of Summer, and now, Fall.

Here are some Rays fun facts and trivia coupled with wisecracks rooted in the team’s history of futility.

The Rays play in a building called Tropicana Field. It was opened in 1990 with the name the Florida Suncoast Dome and renamed the ThunderDome in 1993. The change to Tropicana Field came in 1996 via an agreement between the club and Tropicana Dole Beverages North America. The club did not reveal how much it paid the company to use its name.

The roof of Tropicana Field is lit up in orange after a Rays win. Prior to this year, no orange light bulbs had to be replaced.

The Rays dropped the “Devil” from the team name for the 2008 season. Satan felt the team’s performance was giving him a bad name.

Tropicana Field has close to 300 concession stands, kiosks and other places where fans can buy food and drink, meaning every fan at a game can have his or her own personal hot dog vendor.

The name Devil Rays was chosen in 1995 when the new franchise held a contest in which 7,000 fans voted. It was the last time the terms Devil Rays and 7,000 fans were used in the same sentence.

In 2004, the team enjoyed a franchise-record winning streak of 12 games, which coincidentally matched the number of season tickets sold that year.

Evan Longoria, who plays third base for the Rays, is not related to Eva Longoria, who plays Gabrielle on “Desperate Housewives.”

Insert your own joke about third base and Eva Longoria here.

The Devil Rays were a central part of the 2002 movie “The Rookie,” which, against all odds, drew even fewer fans than the team.

In prior years, professional wrestlers staged exhibitions after Devil Rays games. The relationship was a natural since professional wrestling isn’t a real competition and neither was Rays baseball.

The Rays hold an annual “cowbell night,” giving away cowbells for fans to clang during the game. Opposing teams have considered the cowbells a nuisance, not because of the noise but because of the cases of unopened cow bells cluttering up the concourse.

Police commanders say they will strictly enforce an ordinance banning ticket scalping near Tropicana Field during the World Series. Officers assigned to the stadium beat responded by asking, “What’s a ticket scalper?”

(E-mail Brent Batten at bebatten@naplesnews.com)