ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — "According to Life & Style Magazine, the typical man cries twice a month," late-night TV host Jay Leno deadpanned into the cameras in August 2007. "Or eight times a month if you're a Tampa Bay Devil Rays fan."

Hey, that's a good one. But Leno has nothing on David Letterman when it comes to ridiculing a franchise that finished last in nine of its first 10 years of existence and never had won more than 70 games in a season.

One of the Top 10 signs you're dumb: "You're a Tampa Bay Devil Rays season ticketholder."

One of the Top 10 things baseball taught Roger Clemens: "The best practical joke: Tell a teammate they're traded to the Devil Rays."

One of the Top 10 signs you've got a bad job: "The name on your uniform is 'Devil Rays.' "

And one of the Top 10 ways Paris Hilton was preparing for jail: "Attending Tampa Bay Devil Rays games to get used to solitary."

Yeah, you had to love those Devil Rays. Always good for a chuckle.

It's difficult to transform a losing baseball team into a winning one. It's even more difficult to change perception of an organization once the image of a bunch of bumbling chuckleheads has become firmly fixed.

And, sometimes, the second issue can make the first more difficult.

That the Tampa Bay Rays — the team name, logo and colors all were changed before the season — will host Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday night at Tropicana Field is proof that a franchise once deemed a hopeless laughingstock has turned the corner.

The Rays won 97 games this year, 31 more than a year ago and 27 more than their previous highwater mark.

They did it with good players. They also did it by changing the culture of losing and incompetence that had settled over this team like smog.

New owner Stuart Sternberg had quite a task in front of him when he took over in October 2005. Public confidence in the team was at a low ebb coming off Vince Naimoli's stewardship.

Club president Matt Silverman noted that one of the first things Sternberg did after taking over was to put up an "Under Construction" sign to signal to the public that a lot needed to change.

"And we even said at that time that the name might change too as part of that transformation," he said. "We launched the new name last November, and I think that's what helped set the tone. It gave everyone in the organization, players included, a chance to reinvent themselves. And I think taking the field with the Rays uniform and the new colors allowed them to break free from the past.

"There were so many negative associations with the name Devil Rays, with the jokes on Letterman and Leno, that you couldn't do something within the confines of that name. So while we have some connection to the past with the sleeve patch of the fish, and we still have the fish in the tank (behind the centerfield fence) because they're a great attraction, the Rays are now about sunshine and about energy, and that's really captured by that sunburst that's on the jersey."

The front office continues working toward a new 34,000-seat, retractable-roof ballpark.

Sternberg started rebuilding goodwill by offering free parking at home games his first two years and also invested more than $18 million in improvements to Tropicana Field.

None of that would have mattered if the Rays didn't win, of course, and that's where general manager Andrew Friedman comes in.

Along with senior vice president, baseball operations Gerry Hunsicker, he made almost 20 trades in three years going into this season. All the moves, again, were made with an eye on changing the atmosphere surrounding the team. That's a big reason why such talented players as Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes are no longer with the team.

"We had a number of players who had said publicly they were going to play their 'X' amount of years here and go somewhere else," Friedman said. "We wanted to create a destination spot where players wanted to play. If your own players don't want to stay, it's a difficult thing to go out on the market and try to recruit free agents.

"I think our lack of success was our biggest detriment. So I think this year will help us significantly on that front. I think no state income tax and the great weather here year-round and all the attributes of this area are very compelling for the players. But they really didn't want to come here and finish in last place.

"And it's hard to blame them. And it's also hard to convince them of a plan ahead of time. So our hope and expectation is that guys will react very positively to our success this year and that will help us sustain it."

Young went to the Twins last November in a deal that brought American League Championship Series MVP Matt Garza and starting shortstop Jason Bartlett. Previously, Carlos Pena was signed as a minor league free agent, and the rights to Akinori Iwamura were secured from the Yakult Swallows.

That bolstered a nucleus of homegrown talent: Carl Crawford, James Shields, B.J. Upton, Andy Sonnanstine, David Price and leading AL Rookie of the Year candidate Evan Longoria.

The new management team inherited a lot of baggage three years ago. The story, unconfirmed, is that Naimoli originally wanted to call his expansion team the Sting Rays, but balked because he would have had to buy out a minor league team that already was using the nickname.

And it went quickly downhill after that.

There was the time former owner Naimoli went nuts after a scout mistakenly walked into his private restroom. There was the time Naimoli's wife was stopped for a minor traffic violation in downtown St. Pete and her husband, in the car behind, jumped out and started berating the officer. "Don't you know who I am?" he reportedly shouted, apparently not catching on to the idea that it might be better if he didn't.

And, famously, there was the time a high school band was invited to perform the national anthem, then told it would have to buy tickets if it wanted to stay and watch the game, even though there were, ahem, plenty of seats available. The band declined, but when the story began to circulate, it only reinforced the organizational image as petty and cheap.

There were plenty of good reasons why the Rays became punchlines, the butt of so many jokes.

Now they're getting the last laugh.