Excerpts from Against Me! guitarist perseveres with Rays

My buddy, James, was recently interviewed for a piece on ESPN.com. He didn’t say whether the swarthy John Kruk took part in the interview in any way, shape or form. However, one would hope that James took the necessary precautions to ward off the essence of the blood-sausage like Kruk just in case. In any case, You can read excerpts from the interview below. You can ready the full piece here.

“I grew up in the Tampa-St. Pete area and I was living there when we got the news about getting a major league team,” said Against Me! guitarist James Bowman. “A bunch of friends and I pooled our money. We bought season tickets to the inaugural season. “There were some lean years. But we stuck it out.”

And while the band has taken off, Bowman is still watching the Rays. Like the rest of the baseball world, he’s following games via mobile apps when he’s not watching with the MLB package in the Against Me! tour bus. But he has to leave the bus for a good conversation about Evan Longoria or sabermetrics.“Everybody else thinks baseball is boring,” he said about his bandmates. “If I have it on they moan and groan, so I usually just pick up my laptop and watch it.”

He has, however, been asked to throw out a first pitch later this season. He’s working on finding a date that works. But he knows July 2 against the hated New York Yankees would be perfect.