R.Budd Selig (slumping): Don’t panic, please… don’t panic… don’t panic. Someone call… someone call the attendance ambulance!
“What I’ve said to you in the past, I’ll say to you again, and I’ve said this to Stu quite a bit. I’ve been through a lot of these things over the last 20 years, actually the last 40 years, and I understand that, but, look, they’ve run a great operation, they’re a very competitive organization, they have very competitive teams. As I study the attendance every day, looking where they are, to see that they’re No. 29, I think it is, in attendance is not, is, it’s inexcusable. Nobody can defend that.
“This is a very competitive baseball team. I know they’ve had a lot of injuries, so on and so forth, and they’ve missing (Evan) Longoria and all that is true. But the average major-league attendance is between 31,000 and 32,000 and if my memory is serving me well this morning, it’s about 19,000 something, Tampa’s attendance. Now if they were a club in last place every year the last five years you’d say, well, look, after all, you are what you are and you’ve got to do better.
“It’s disappointing. And I know that people down there, some people, will be offended. Not the fans, not the people who go every day and I know they have great intensity, the people there. As all of you know, I watch a lot of games every day, sometimes all 15 of them, and I pay great attention not only to what’s happening on the field, but to the attendance.
“So to use my father’s old line, nothing is ever good or bad except by comparison. I’ll rest my case. It’s disappointing. And I’m concerned.’‘
Repoz
Posted: July 11, 2012 at 11:02 AM |
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They haven't finished in last since 2007. If baseball is going to catch on there, you'd think it would start to catch on by now. They're not going to be this good forever.
Also, gazing upon the majestic flight of airborne struck baseballs should not be obstructed by freaking catwalks.
Absolutely true. Of course, the converse of that is that there is no inherent right to have a team in your city.
And their attendance has gone up since then despite their uptick in success corresponding with an economic meltdown in Florida.
A team that's gotten a new park recently enough that its attendance issues can be ignored.
It was still in bottom half of the league attendance figure despite having a pennant-caliber club. If we're going to use the Florida economy as an excuse, then maybe there shouldn't be a club in Tampa because of the volatile Florida economy.
Yeah, perhaps MLB teams should move to China or something.
You do realize that half the teams in the league or going to be in the bottom half and that for the most part the names are going to stay the same, don't you? Rank means nothing, it's how many times the turnstile spins that matters. Rank is an excuse to get free money to build shiny new stadiums.
Maybe. It doesn't make the people of Tampa/St. Pete bad people. I don't mind the content of what Selig is saying, but the tone. And, of course, good luck moving the team Bud. I would love for him to go hat-in-hand back to Montreal...
Rank means something if the club is winning. There are going to be clubs at the bottom in attendance, and they should be the teams that are in last place. The Rays have been a very successful club on the field for the last 5-6 seasons, and yet continue to lag near the bottom of the league in attendance. I don't think the people of Tampa are bad people either. There are a myriad of reasons why this team does not draw well - bad stadium, bad location, bad economy. But unless those things change or people overcome those obstacles to come out to the ballpark more often, they are probably going to lose their team eventually.
But yea, Bud is kinda being a dick about it.
But.
Did these people not understand that when you put a major sports team in a city that's never had one before, it is going to take decades to build up a viably loyal fan base? And that goes triple when it's a city that has never even cared about the sport before. If you're going to insist on putting a bunch of hockey teams in cities where no one cares about hockey, you have to commit to leaving them there for 30, 40 years. And if you don't think that's viable then you can't put a team there in the first place.
But Bettman and his posse apparently followed dreams of continental conquest and squalls of money raining from the skies. They had no idea what they were doing. And now the retreat out of the southern U.S. and back to Canada (Atlanta/Winnipeg) has begun, and probably isn't going to stop there (Phoenix/Nashville, Quebec/Toronto).
Baseball in Tampa still could stick, I think, but it's going to be 20 more years before we know.
Hey now, some of us care. Just not about the local team.
Maybe, but I wouldn't bet a plug nickel on the Rays being permitted to play in Tropicana Field for another 20 years. Before then they will either be in a new stadium, in another city, or they won't exist at all.
People keep trying to turn Florida into a baseball state. Has never worked.
I don't know why this fact is routinely ignored. No one in the Tampa area (in a state still heavy with transplats) who isn't a teenager grew up a Rays fan. Yes, it's nice that the folks in Colorado (and to a lesser degree Arizona) immediately embraced their new clubs, but it's not automatic. Allow a generation to grow up as Rays fans before concluding the area can't possibly support MLB.
And, you know, recognize that even if Tampa truly is the worst market in MLB, somebody's gotta be.
To where? What lucky group of taxpayers should erect a shiny new palace for this woebegone baseballing group?
A-yup.
Anyways, back on topic, uh, what:
In other words, "I want to be clear, I am only talking poorly of the people who don't care who I am or what I have to say anyways." That's some wonderful hedging Bud.
If you wanted to generate interest in a nascent fan base, that ballpark is about the worst possible enticement to come out and experience the game.
Montreal.
For comparison...
Blue Jays: showed up in 1977 and sucked hard for 5 years and was still tied for last year 6. They bottomed out at 11th (out of 14) and were 7th the first year they weren't in last, 2nd the next two years and 1st in the AL for attendance two years after making the playoffs (1987 the year they blew it in the last week) back to 3rd the next year then moved to a new park and shattered AL attendance records for a few years (1st in AL for 6 straight years). The old park was horrid - ice cold in spring and fall, seats that faced beyond the outfield fence, bench seating in LF.
Expos: Showed up in 1969, 10 years sub-500 but only was worse than 9th of 12 one year (11th). New park in 1977 but one with a bad rep (aka The Big Owe due to debt and roof that wasn't added for more than a decade) that was built for the '76 Olympics. In 79 became a contender at last (over 500) and reached 4th in NL for attendance, reached 3rd in '81 as they finally reached the playoffs (strike year), peaking at #2 in '83 despite a 82-80 team. Then the wheels came off - Pete Rose signed to provide 'leadership', Carter traded to division rival NY Mets, and the payroll moved to the bottom levels. 9th in 1987 was the last time they cracked the top 10 and it was (outside of 1994) the last year they seriously contended. Last in attendance from 1998 to 2004 as MLB did everything it could to discourage fans from coming out.
Both teams were in cold weather climates many thought couldn't support baseball. Both, when they had contenders, were doing better than Tampa does now by a landslide despite parks that (at first) were arguably worse (doubt anyone suffered through fog delays in Tampa). In the 5 year window that the Expos were among the best teams in baseball with super young talent (Gary Carter, Tim Raines, Andre Dawson among many others) they had 25-28k a game show up. Tampa has cracked 24k just once in their history - that was their first season.
No question - Tampa Bay has the lowest fan support in baseball. Put that team in any other area and, after this many years of greatness, you'd see far larger crowds. Put it in Montreal and you'd see 30k+ a game I'd bet even in the Big Owe. Winning is supposed to cure low fan support but in Tampa it has just made it obvious how bad the fan support is.
What, you don't react well when a commissioner famous for extorting public financing complains that you don't also spend enough on the product you've already subsidized?
At long last, will we see an expansion team in Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average?
Yeah, I know Primer Wisdom seems to be that Montreal never had any issues that weren't Loria-generated, but that's not really an accurate representation. If you outsource to Quebec, I'm pretty sure all you've done is traded one worst market in baseball* for another.
* Actually, it's possible that Miami will once again be baseball's worst market once the new stadium high wears off, but since they snookered their taxpayers, no one really cares about that.
Can you imagine the San Jose Rays?
I don't see how those are relevant examples. The White Sox have been a pretty mediocre franchise the last few years, and now that they are playing well, attendance is up and they're firmly in the middle of the league in attendance. The D-Backs have been bipolar, alternating good years with bad, and while attendance isn't great, it isn't at the bottom either. The Jays have been thoroughly mediocre, yet attendance is up quite a bit this year. None of them have been in the World Series in the last five years like the Rays, and all draw better than the Rays.
Perhaps, but it hasn't taken that long for baseball to stick in most every other expansion city. The Rays have finished in the top half of the league in attendance just once - their inaugural season. Every other expansion team was able to finish in the top half of the league in attendance within 15 years (aside from the inaugural season) except the Mariners - who didn't have a winning season til their 13th season, and the original Senators - and they moved. Maybe it takes 35 years for a team to stick - but I doubt ownership and MLB has that much patience.
It only takes one foolish group of city officials and/or a rich billionaire to make this happen. I can see a Sun Belt city which weathered the recession well wanting to build a stadium to become "Major League".
And when such an option is available, rather than hypothetical, then it's something that might need to be discussed, particularly every two months. Until then, I don't know why this is deemed such an urgent problem.
I can understand why Bud does it - he wants each of his franchises to be able to extract as much cash from communities as possible. I'm not sure why Primates continue to do his bidding.
Well whatever, I thought we were just having a discussion and making observations. I am frankly jealous of the team the Rays have and would love to have that kind of success here. If the fans don't show up, they don't show up (more credit should be due to post #3). Hopefully the good loyal Rays fans who have shown up won't have their team taken away from them, because that really sucks.
That may well be true nowadays. And it's a really tough park to reach via public transportation, not that bus service is much good in Tampa/St. Pete anyway. My guess is that its primary competition would be the Oakland Coliseum.
But it's utter paradise compared to Olympic Stadium in Montreal, which was by far the worst MLB ballpark I've ever been to. And at least you don't have a Zamboni fleet blowing water off the field, as used to happen in Cincinnati's not-much-lamented Riverfront Stadium. Multi-purpose cookie-cutter 70s era stadiums -- ah, those were the days -- not.
I just don't know why people treat the Rays' attendance as something that must be addressed, particularly considering the only real solutions (some group of taxpayers getting fleeced or contraction) are stuff most of us generally object to.
Miami had a much worse situation for years. But because Miami was able to get a new stadium deal, we didn't have regular discussions about how untenable that situation was.
Only if you can sign up Pete Rose as the manager.
Uh-huh. So basically you don't like discussing the issue, therefore we should all just agree to not talk about it and pretend that everything is OK down there and that there's really no problem at all and everything will somehow just kind of magically work itself out eventually.
I also object to good teams playing in front of empty stadiums.
I dont know any details in TB, but in Oakland, despite having a not so good stadium, people came out to the ballpark until managment changed tactics. they started badmouthing the stadium. Saying it was a terrible place to watch a game and eventually people listend. Despite having really good teams in 2004-2006 attendance declinded each year till it became less than 20,000 a game in 2007, and by that time the team was lousy enough that the low numbers were not really going anywhere.
This is an excellent example of bad marketting, and I wonder if Tampa has some of the same issues.
First, I don't believe the situation is as dire as some here do. They average almost 20,000 per night. It's low, but it doesn't strike me as embarassing. Of course, I can remember the days when Cleveland squeezed a couple of hundred people in 80,000-seat Memorial Stadium. That was embarassing attendance.
Second, their TV and radio ratings have, the last I saw, been much stronger (middle to upper end of the pack), showing that the area is not oblivious to Rays' baseball.
And finally, what's your solution? A real, workable not pie-in-the-sky solution to the Tampa problem? Because without one, then yes, we might as well just pretend everything is OK down there and everything will somehow just kind of magically work itself out eventually.
Put it in New York or LA? Who the hell there is going to build another stadium in those areas for a team that no one there is clamoring for? Relocate it to another questionable market that would have to build that really expensive stadium?
Some city where MLB is played is going to be the worst market for baseball. That fact is inescapable. It doesn't mean you can't look to make that market better (or find one that is). But the simple existence of a worst market does not mean that is a problem that must be solved.
At the very least, they should try playing inside the empty stadiums. Maybe then, some people might show up to watch them.
In general I agree with SoSH, why should we care in general? In terms of making basball more competetive and interesting, the Rays have done thier jobs. If they dont make a bunch of milionares a bunch more money... oh well.
What do you mean who's going to pay for it? I have no clue, I was just making a suggestion!
Stop spouting nonsense. 20,000 fans a night is fine for a team like Oakland that everyone knows isn't a serious contender and probably isn't going to be for years. It freaking sucks for a team that made the World Series in 2008, made the playoffs again in 2010, made the playoffs again in 2011, has a really good chance to make the playoffs and contend yet again in 2012, and has been one of the best teams in baseball for the last four and a half years in the league's most competitive division with lots of fun and exciting young players. Freaking Pittsburgh and Kansas City do better than this for crying out loud, and they have been mostly horrible for the last 15-20 years. The entire point here is that if this is what it's like now, we're potentially looking at the Cleveland scenario you mentioned when they get really bad again.
And finally, what's your solution? A real, workable not pie-in-the-sky solution to the Tampa problem?
I don't have some kind of "magic bullet" solution. The obvious ideal short-term solution is for the people down there to actually start showing up to games more. The obvious longer term solution is that they need a new stadium, preferably in a better location, if that's even possible. As to exactly where it will go and how it will be paid for, it's not my job to figure out those details, that's for the league, the owner, the politicians, and the taxpayers down there to work out.
But don't kid yourself, if one or both of those things doesn't happen some time within the next few years or so, their longer term existence down there will eventually be in real jeopardy.
You don't have any solution. No one does. That's my point. So your caterwauling how something must be done doesn't move me much.
I stand corrected. This detailed comment shows you've got things all worked out.
... in March.
I don't even mind that they're drawing poorly per se. I mind that they're drawing poorly when their team is enjoying great success. Of course the mid-80s Indians are going to draw miserably - they sucked for years. The Royals and Pirates have justifiably had poor attendance the last decade. The Rays had justifiably poor attendance the first decade of their existence. The teams that are 29th in attendance typically suck.
It is s the fact that the Rays have gotten really good with exciting young, marketable players, and yet this hasn't produced much of an attendance boost that is a bit mystifying.
The problems with Tampa are manifold. The metro area is small. The metro area is poor. The metro area is sparsely populated, even for the Sun Belt. The park is ugly. The park is far removed from important population centers. The city's residents are significantly transplants, and elderly transplants, without a strong Tampan identity. (There isn't even a known word for being from Tampa.)
None of these things make the residents of Tampa-St. Pete bad people, but it does make the metro area clearly a bad baseball market. Definitionally, if a team is consistently winning and contending for five years, and it can't even draw in top 2/3 of baseball markets, the market has failed. It's clearly a worse place to put a baseball team than, say, Portland. (By population, density, median income, and transit, I think Portland could do very well as a mid-market MLB franchise.)
The lease on the Trop is pretty well ironclad, which makes moving the team close to impossible, and the best markets to move the club to are either within the territorial rights of other franchises or utterly uninterested in dumping a load of taxpayer dollars into Stu Sternberg's backyard money pit. So you get these toothless quasi-threats from Selig, which will only make the situation in Tampa worse.
Like how the Oklahoma City Thunder took all of two seasons to reach the top half of the league in attendance, and are still there after four?
As a counterpoint, there's the Marlins. Since '98 (when Tampa entered the league), they've actually won a WS (and should have had a little "WS Winner" hangover in '98), they've had a better winning %, and they've opened their new stadium (which is Bud's real reason for the above rant). Despite all this, they've actually averaged fewer fans than Tampa since '98 - 18,106 vs. 18,845. Even with the new ballpark and a hot start to the season (they were in 1st on June 3rd), they're still 12th in attendance in the NL this year; this will be the first year since '05 they haven't been last in the league.
So where's the outrage about South Florida, Bud??? Oh yeah, I forgot - you've already sucked the public dry there; it's time for new blood.
Clearly? If that was the case someone might be interested in purchasing a team for Portland and there might be an organized effort to land a team, which doesn't seem to be the case. Portland is about as marginal as Tampa, but without even a poor stadium.
How do you figure it's larger than Tampa? The Portland MSA has 2.2 million people, while Tampa-St. Pete has 2.8 million, and the Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater MSA has 4.2 million, according to Wikipedia.
2. There's really only a threat to the team's longterm existence in Tampa if the value of the franchise isn't increasing and/or Sternberg is losing money every year. I'm not aware of any evidence of either.
3. The other major threat would be the existence of a substantially better market but nobody has ever come up with one.
4. Obviously MLB's revenue sharing can only go so far so it would be "better" if the Rays weren't so dependent on revenue sharing but it's not a major problem like #2 ... at least not until there are too many "hopeless" franchises.
5. #54 is one of Joey B's most reasonable posts ever ... but long-term crapitude and poor attendance have not seriously threatened the existence of Pitt, KC, Cleveland, etc.
Bud is just firing off another round of his standard "build it and they will stay" spiel only see #1.
Tulsa Roughnecks!
Portland already tried to get an MLB team. It didn't work out.
Portland Baseball Team
I can think of more negative things - is it dangerous inside and outside the ball park? Think crime, falling girders, asbestos, botulism, the works.
The big difference here is that Tampa has had a baseball culture for decades, if not longer. The Sun Belt experimented has produced mixed results (some teams have succeeded - San Jose for example) because in many regions, there was no hockey culture AT ALL. It basically didn't exist before the NHL came.
Tampa with its tradition of talent (Lopez, Gooden, Boggs), its spring training history, its minor league history...there should be people there who like baseball.
I think the problem is more fundamental - that there are many people on a fixed income, that the recession hit hard, that the stadium is terrible and poorly located, that many people root for the Yankees and other franchises and don't really care whether a team exists there or not.
But those are fundamental problems, and maybe Tampa just isn't a strong enough market for baseball because of them.
To me, Montreal is looking like a better idea every day. Relatively buoyant economy, dollar parity, big city...and a big city with an identity. People don't come to Montreal and live the expatriate transplant lifestyle. They come and become Montrealers, it's much more like an East Coast city that way.
They'd definitely support this team to the tune of at least 30,000 per game, even in the Big O. I don't even see how there can be any doubt they would.
The added benefits for the rest of us:
1. Montreal is a fantastic city to visit.
2. French language broadcasts on MLB radio. "Brad Wilkerson Bobblehead" said in a thick, French Canadian accent still cracks me up.
3. Maybe O-Pee-Chee will come back and print those dual language baseball cards that fascinated me as a kid. I think I saw 3 or 4 of them pop up in the coin store when I was a kid and they seemed very mysterious and exotic...
That's an interesting theory. The only problem I have with it is that the last time that they came even remotely close to drawing 30,000 fans a game was back in 1983. After that, the best they did was something like around 23,000 a game. I'm sorry, but I have to say that this fills me with a lot of doubt that what you're saying is true.
Exactly. Now, it's rational for any business to want to continually increase its profitability, by looking at its weakest product or service or program or whatever and converting it into a stronger one. But unless that weak link is really a sinkhole of resources, it's a pretty minor problem, and doesn't deserve the Selig rhetoric. (And though I tempt YR's intervention, the fact that a weak but profitable franchise gets money from the Yankees is not a sinkhole in overall terms for MLB; it's just a strategic investment in making their product more interesting. Competitive Rays's easons like 2008 and 2009 are quite possibly going to build more interest nationally, and even in New York, than a season like 1998.)
Fine them!
They averaged 24.5 in 1994, and that's without the resume of success the Rays have put forward. They won 94 games the year before, but they were never in the race, and they hadn't made the playoffs since 1981.
Attendance was clearly going up as well as the summer warmed up - they sold out two out of three games versus the Braves, then drew: 36, 28, 38, 28, 18, 23, 20, 32, 35, 34, 30, 37, 30, 39. That's a quick and dirty 32,800 per game and as they got into September crowds would have gone up even more.
That's a team with little previous success, a struggling economy, and a bad stadium on the wrong side of town. Today with a better economy and that feeling of loss? They'd do over 30K a game with a good team.
Besides San Jose (which was the novel first mover and got popular largely by being the first sports team with an "edgy" 90's identity) and Dallas (which is a big enough city to support anything), what NHL Sun Belt teams have succeeded at all?
I always have to say this when the idea of baseball returning to Montréal is discussed here, but the fundamental problem has got nothing to do with attendance, but with local broadcast revenue.
Broadcast revenue is what separates the markets, and Tampa has always done significantly better than Montréal in that department. Income from people who actually go to the games is valuable, but secondary.
Both Tampa and Miami have done well enough as television markets. That is what sustains them, and there is no obvious alternative to Tampa in this respect.
A second Canadian team as a foil to the Rogers-owned Blue Jays would be valuable to Bell/TSN.
LA, obviously, and Nashville has a chance.
Where I live, we have county-based school systems. Each year stats come out showing how much is spent per pupil. Counties are continually pressured by 'caring' individuals to avoid finishing last in $ spent; it says they don't care. So everyone keeps spending more. And someone, wouldntchaknowit, still finishes last!
Baseball in Tampa is not in trouble any time soon. Bud is simply angling for a free stadium.
The silly statements about 20-30 years to build a fan base has no base. The Jays, Expos, and pretty much every other expansion team that stayed in its city for more than 10 years reached higher than Tampa has in the rankings of attendance, especially once the team started contending for a few years as Tampa has.
First wave...
Houston: dead last years 2/3, 2nd year 4 (new park) first of 5 years in top half despite poor team
Mets: top 3 years 3 to 12 despite record setting horrid early on
Angels: last year one, 4th year 2, 1st year 6 despite the Dodgers being nearby
Senators II/Rangers: 6th year 9 (of 12), moved to Texas year 12 and in 4th by year 3 in Texas
Wave 2...
Pilots/Brewers: 7th year 2 (first in Milwaukee), 3rd year 7 peaked at #2 year 15
Padres: last first 5 years, 4th (of 12) by year 8
Royals: 3rd by year 5, top 5 from then until year 15 top 10 through year 24.
Expos: top 10 year 1 through 17 with one exception peaking at #2 year 15, just once top 10 since (9th this year in Washington)
Wave 3...
Mariners: year 17 was 2nd season over 500, 2nd year top 10 and has been top 10 ever since until this year, twice #1
Blue Jays: 4th year one, #1 by year 11 (first of 7 #1 finishes) 12 of 14 in 2010 was the worst they've done
Wave 4...
Marlins: top 10 4 of first 5 years peaking at #5, never again above #13 of 16 (12th this year) thanks to team owner breaking faith via fire sale after World Series (last year top 10, actually #5). Seems clear what killed it off there - why come if your owner will just dump everyone the minute you show up and the team does well?
Rockies: 1st in attendance first 7 years in a row just 3 times out of top 10
Wave 5...
Diamondbacks: 2nd year 1 and 5, top 10 up to year 7, then dropped to 11th or worse ever since
Rays: 7th year 1, 10th year 2, 9th year 13, rest is bottom 4. Hasn't cracked 1.9 mil since year 1 and won't this year.
Of the teams that didn't move early one (Senators II & Seattle Pilots) the Rays are clearly the flop. Odd that winning hasn't helped the Marlins, Diamondbacks or Rays though.
One wonders if some markets took a liking to baseball (such as Arizona & Miami) then once a title was gained felt 'no need to follow them anymore'. Might be the old marketing issue too - for example, the Jays stopped marketing once the park was sold out every game in the early 90's and it took awhile but the fans eventually stopped coming and now they are starting up the old marketing tricks from the 70's early 80's again (off season caravans to different towns across the country, 1/2 decent TV ads, player appearances all over the region, etc.) and fans are starting to come back.
It's just a theory of course, but I sometimes feel like in some ways the Marlins still haven't really fully recovered from what Huizenga did.
Rays: 7th year 1, 10th year 2, 9th year 13, rest is bottom 4. Hasn't cracked 1.9 mil since year 1 and won't this year.
God bless the 12-team league. Makes some of the Expos' bottom 4 finishes also appear as Top 10 ones.
The Expos' had one nice attendance run in 36 years (Top 4 finishes for five straight years). That ended 10 years before the strike or Loria or whatever other explanation is proffered for the death of baseball in Montreal.
There's the problem, right there: the Rays are playing in front of the stadium, instead in of it. No wonder it's empty!
EDIT: Coke to Gef. Actually, when I went to the Trop I got the distinct feeling that one could easily wander around the periphery without even suspecting there was a baseball game going on...
The problem with the Rays is that they've now been a contending team for five years, and they're not drawing anything near to what Montreal drew when they had their run of contention. That's what a failed market looks like.
Since you were the one who defined what a failed market is, I'm not surprised it resembles that.
The Rays' attendance has been poor. No question. Of course, like the Expos (and the Marlins, who get a pass in these "sky is falling" threads), there are factors that have played a role in that poor attendance. They play in what's generally agreed to be the worst park in the league (and unlike the Spos, while the Big O might have been the worst of a bunch of similar parks, the Trop is clearly and markedly inferior to virtually every other place where baseball is being played now). Their park itself is in a difficult place to get to (or so I've read). Their successful period coincided with a tremendous drop in the economy, with the local economy particularly hard hit. And they have, unlike some other places where new clubs have been placed, a population heavy with transplants that may take more time to embrace the new team than a region with a more defined identity.
On the other hand, their TV and radio ratings have been fine during this up cycle, suggesting the Rays' success has not gone completely unnoticed in the Tampa area.
Tampa may very well be the worst market in MLB. It may not be able to support MLB (though obviously there is no place to move the club for the foreseeable future). I just don't get why fans at this site are so quick to write it off and ignore some of the issues that contribute to its attendance issues while making excuses for Montreal's failure (Loria, the srike, the dollar, etc.) and Florida's even worse record of support (Huizenga, Loria again).
What's happening in Tampa right now has very little precedent in modern baseball.
There also was never a solid block decade of abysmal baseball
The Lake Woebegone "Good-Guys"?
Managed, of course, by Mr. Noir himself.
It could be funded by donations from listeners like you....
I say we make the Yankees pay for it.
This never ceases to amaze me. And depress me.
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