Olympic Stadium is no prize either. There is nothing like sitting behind the dugout in a seat facing center field. As I see it fans have two choices: avoid going to games, or paying a lot of visits to a chiropractor. With the attendence figures in Montreal I suspect the chiropractors in Montreal are probably cheaper and more entertaining.

"...a sadistic dentist." WTF?!?

Anyway, time for my cheap shots at the Metrodome. The only justification for the place is the first part of April and the outside chance that games could go into mid-October. Since this never happens in Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, etc it is unlikely anyone could figure out how to muddle through similar situations in MN. Other than that, it is a large plastic football container (I Rubbermaid was the general contractor) that barely contains baseball. Seats point toward the 50, about half of the outfield bleacher seats cannot see most of the outfield playing surface, the rightfield wall is a tarp, the ceiling is a pleasant mud-rubbed leather color, and all of the meaningful revenue producers like luxury boxes are handled by the Vikings. But the worst thing about the place is the short summer. When the weather is good the baseball has to be really good to lure in the casual fan. We don't get as much summer in MN as a place like Tampa, so when a game starts to drag and Chad Allen loses another shallow floater in the ceiling, you can look across the stadium out through the doors to the concourse and see sunshine. Precious, warm sunshine. It makes two things important: open-air ball and rational scheduling that has the Twins playing on the road in April.

But I digress: the Rays need to clean up their act on the field. Jim has it exactly right that the stadium is the least of their problems. These guys could play at Disneyworld and have empty seats. People will watch winning baseball anywhere. Bad baseball is a hard sell even with a new stadium. Rays baseball, well, I guess I'm proud of the die-hard 10000 fans that showed up.

Seth, any team (except maybe Atlanta :-)) could sell out the 7th game of the World Series, that's not the point. Drawing people to a game in early July against the Devil Rays is where big league teams make their $$. That's the difference.

"I don't think people go to baseball games because of the stadium"

People absolutely go to games for the Stadium, it's why myself, the other four with me, and everyone within earshot of me that I spoke with was at PNC Park a week ago Sunday. It's why myself and 3 friends drove 5 1/2 to Balitmore 7 years ago, even though none of us cared about the Angels or the Orioles. How else can you explain the attendance boom at every new big league park in the last 10 years?

The stadium is not why everyone goes obviously, but it makes a big difference for the casual fan. Every team will draw 6-8,000 fans to games, that's the die hard factor, which is all Montreal gets. It's all Cleveland and Atlanta got when they sucked it up 12 years ago. The rest come for a) to see a winner, or an exciting young team, b) to see a new stadium, or a classic historical stadium (like Fenway or Yankee), c) because the team promotes itself well.

"A winning team will always draw, a losing team never will, regardless of the stadium."

The Pirates are a losing team, and they are drawing very well this year. The Marlins won in 1997 and didn't, they would've in 1998 if Huzienga had been patient (there is almost always an attendance boom after a team follows up a big year with another one). This is not always the case but you say "always" and that simply isn't true.

So wait, Joe. Are you going back to scruff now? You need to give us some warning on these things.

So wait, Joe. Are you going back to scruff now? You need to give us some warning on these things.