For the past three nights, the Tampa Bay Rays brought back memories of the 2008 World Series—a series they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies.
On Tuesday night, the Phillies returned to Tropicana Field for a rematch and Rays management expected a filled house to greet them. There were plenty of factors to assume this. First, no World Series rematch had ever drawn less than 37,000 fans.
Second, the Phillies have long trained in Clearwater—a short distance away from Tropicana field, creating a huge following.
Third, Tampa Bay was a common location for transplants from the city of brotherly love. Then there's the Rays fans, whom management expected would be thrilled to see the Phillies once again.
The attendance at the Trop?
Game One: 19,608.
Game Two: 18,862.
The majority were Phillies fans and worse, I dare you to believe that the figures presented represented actual butts in seats.
They don't.
Say what you will about the bay area's small market status—but a marquee match up like this one drew less than Minnesota at Milwaukee.
I type that again—Twins against the Brewers doubled the attendance of the Rays versus Phillies game.
"Nights like (Tuesday) night give us pause, and make us question how quickly we can get this ramped up," Rays President Matt Silverman said to the St. Pete Times. "It makes us question whether we have the firepower we need to keep this team compelling and competitive."
Silverman called out the area without saying, "Tampa Bay sucks as a baseball market."
We all know he's thinking it.
So what is the problem? Well, location of the stadium is always the first thing brought up. The main populace of the area—Hillsborough County is across the bridge and depending on where you live in the county, it could take as much as 40 minutes to get to a game. With nearly every game televised, most fans would rather stay home and watch it rather than battle with the traffic over the bridge.
There lies the next issue—why is every single home game televised?
Sure, in the big cities that have no issues selling out I'm sure its the norm, but in this area, where most fans are laid back transplants and the stadium's in a bad location, there needs to be some extra motivation to make it to the stadium.
Not seeing the game on television just may do it.
Transplants—there in lies another issue.
Like the Buccaneers and the Lightning before them, the Rays have been fighting a losing battle against a fan base filled with transplants from other markets. As long as the Rays were bad, Yankee fans, Mets fans, Cubs fans, Red Sox fans, and Phillies fans had no reason to shed their allegiances and follow the home team.
It's made even more complicated by the fact that many major league baseball teams hold their spring training in the area. The Yankees have a beautiful stadium for their spring training games and they also have a Class A ball team right across the street from Raymond James Stadium.
If baseball wants to succeed in Florida, it must end Spring Training here. The Marlins suffer just as much as the Rays do from fan apathy. Since their teams come down and they can see them throughout the year (not to mention the advent of DirecTV makes never missing a game possible), they have no reason to change colors.
Heck, I can't tell you how much it annoys me to drive down the main thoroughfare in Tampa, Dale Mabry Highway and see Yankees junk all around.
That leads into the next area: history.
This team has only been around for 11 years. Compare that to the teams in the rest of the AL East—Boston (107 years), New York (107 years), Baltimore (115 years) and Toronto (32 years)—and the Rays remain relative infants.
Until last season, Tampa Bay's tradition has been that of failure and 100-loss seasons. Tampa Bay was fantastic last season, but one great season does not build tradition—it starts it. You need to have sustained success over a long period of time. That's difficult to do when you're whining about attendance and threatening not to continue to keep payroll high enough to field a competitive team.
Finally, there's the lack of a public transit system. There are no subways or fast rails or monorails in the bay area. In New York, you can leave your office in Manhattan, hop on the subway and arrive at Yankee Stadium in time for the first pitch.
In Tampa Bay, you must drive EVERYWHERE.
So say you work in downtown Tampa but live in Wesley Chapel (just north of Tampa). Your commute is already a minimum of 50 minutes. So you commute to work, then you commute home to pick up the wife and kids. You're off to the Rays game, which takes you another hour to get there—if you're lucky with traffic. You've been on the road for three hours. How can anyone be expected to do that night in and night out (especially with the game on the television)?
The Rays currently rank 24th in attendance, with an average of 22,592. In the last eight years, Tampa Bay has only been ranked higher than 28th in attendance once and that was last year when the team got a slight bump to 26th overall with the good start. The team has gained an additional average of 5,000 fans a game from 2007 until now. The Marlins won the World Series in 2003, but were no higher than 26th in attendance the next five years.
Like the Marlins before them, the Rays are pointing to a new stadium and revenue streams to allow them to continue to have viability in the market.
Certainly, a stadium situated in Hillsborough County or at the very least closer to the main population base would boost attendance but unless the issues of transplant-ism (if that's not a term, I just made it one), tradition and lack of infrastructure—like a transit system, the Rays will never find themselves in the top 10 of attendance.
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