Rays Fever!

Nearly a third of the way through the season, the best record in baseball belongs to ... the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But the AP couldn't resist taking a dig at Rays fans yesterday:

While Tampa Bay is 11 games over .500 for the first time, the Rays drew an announced crowd of just 12,174 for the holiday game.

Baseball fandom depends on two things: The experience of the current season, and the memory of seasons past. The Rays finally have a current season worth getting excited about (at least so far), but they've been playing for a decade without producing a single non-embarrassing memorable moment - and they play in a city where half the population are transplanted Yankees, Mets and Red Sox fans, all of whose teams have been consistently interestingly for the past ten years. Speaking as a transplanted Sox fan myself, it would take more than two good months of baseball to make me start caring deeply about the fate of the Washington Nationals, and if the Nats subject us to another seven years of Rays-style baseball and then turn in two good months of play in the spring of 2015, I'll be even less likely to leap headlong on to the bandwagon. This isn't a brief for fair-weather fandom: I stuck with the Red Sox and Patriots through the mid-'90s lean years, and I'll happily stick with them long after the current run of championship play has come to an end. But there's a difference between sticking with your favorite team through thick and thin and signing up to root for a lousy team that's never had any thick at all. I have nothing but respect for those Tampans who do root for the Rays as passionately as any fan of a more distinguished franchise - their reward will be great in baseball heaven - and I'm pulling for their team to have a great year, for the same reason that I was pulling for the Rockies last season: I want to see a long-dreadful franchise make the Leap, I want to see Tampa fall in love with Scott Kazmir and James Shields and Evan (not Eva) Longoria, I want the '08 Rays to give future generations of Floridians a reason to identify with their hometown team. But I don't blame the people of Tampa for not showing up in droves just yet.

Update: Clearly the AP didn't get my memo.

Comments

I'm a local, and a fan, and even I have problems getting to the Trop for any games.
For one, St. Pete is a terrible location for more than half the population of the Tampa Bay area. The roads getting in and the traffic snarlups getting out are well-known down here.
The second thing is, we have no viable public transit system that makes it so easy for other cities to get great turnout. I've been to one Cubs game, Wrigley, and damn it was fun hopping onto the Red line train to ride up with a carload of other game goers. A lot of these places with high turnout, I'm willing to bet they've got subways and metros that can get you from one end of the city to the park without the hassles of parking and traffic. Didn't the new Nationals ballpark in D.C. get built near a Metro stop? I'm willing to bet that ensures double the turnout if they had only Beltway traffic as a means of getting to the games...
There are Rays fans out here. Just build us a public transit system to a ballpark in a good central location (Oldsmar maybe?) and we'll call in sick on Thursdays for the day games, deal?

Posted by PaulW | May 28, 2008 11:49 AM

Tampa has no business with a baseball team. It's a sport that ought to be played outdoors. I say ship 'em off to Portland, Oregon; San Juan, Puerto Rico; or Monterey, Mexico.

Posted by Bill | May 28, 2008 11:50 AM

As anyone from the AP ever been to that stadium? It doesn't seem so.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 28, 2008 11:51 AM

I agree with this. This is why a franchise that has a long history with high moments is likely to bring fans back right away (think Pittsburgh Pirates or Baltimore Orioles). People will come because of the tradition AND a good season - a feeling of being a part of something bigger.

Posted by B. Minich | May 28, 2008 12:06 PM

And don't forget that thanks to TBS and Atlanta's long-time regional monopoly, North Florida was Braves' country for a long time.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | May 28, 2008 12:07 PM

I stuck with the Red Sox and Patriots through the mid-'90s lean years

Would that be before or after the Red Sox AL East title in 1995 and the Patriots Super Bowl appearance in 1996?

Posted by right | May 28, 2008 1:02 PM

I think the solution for baseball is to face reality and stare down small town markets and big city owners.

Move KC to LA
Move Pittsburgh to NJ
Move Cinny to Connecticut

The the big city owners would have to share their fan base and you would get rid of 3 small market teams that never will be able to compete.

This won't do much for the next group of small markets like Tampa but it would help them indirectly by hurting the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox

Posted by neil wilson | May 28, 2008 1:56 PM

This Tampa team is legit and should be playoff contenders for the foreseeable future. The franchise has done a great job of filling their system with young talent and signing them to long-term contracts early on before their market value skyrockets to the point of no return.

I'm rooting for them.

Posted by Andrew | May 28, 2008 2:01 PM

I wish nothing but ill to the Rays. Based strictly on the ownership's caving in to the mouth-breathers and taking the "Devil" out of the name.

Posted by roac | May 28, 2008 2:48 PM

I wish nothing but ill to the Rays. Based strictly on the ownership's caving in to the mouth-breathers and taking the "Devil" out of the name.

They're in Florida. Without the mouth-breathers they wouldn't even be able to draw 1200, let alone 12,000.

Posted by Gabriel | May 28, 2008 3:22 PM

Neil, I suspect that all 3 of those teams you mention would draw even worse under your proposed moves. Consider the metro areas that currently have 2 teams:

The Dodgers moved to LA in 1958, and the Angels started up in 1961. Even with just a 3-year head start, the Dodgers consistently outdraw the Angels. Who would go see the Royals in an area that already has 2 teams with 5 decades of history?

The Giants moved to the SF bay area in 1958, and the A's followed in 1968. Although the A's have had more good seasons, the Giants have consistently had the bigger fan base.

The Cubs and the White Sox have both been in Chicago forever.

The Mets started up in 1962 while the Yankees had been there (and winning) forever, but they had a big base of disillusioned Giants and Dodgers fans ready to pick up the new team. The blue and orange colors were no coincidence. The New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs of NY are loaded with Yankees and Mets fans, and the portions of those states outside the NY media market are dominated by the Phillies and Red Sox respectively. Who would go see the Pirates and Reds?

There's more of a history of cities not being able to support multiple teams. Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis all used to have two.

Posted by nodakdude | May 28, 2008 3:58 PM

Move Pittsburgh to NJ
Move Cinny to Connecticut

Sacrilege!

First of all, I don't think the existing NYC franchises would take kindly to this idea.

But more importantly, those teams have over 100 years of tradition and die-hard fans (Pittsburgh's not exactly a small market, either.) Both clubs have been horrendously mismanaged in recent years, but market size is not the root problem. You can make a better case for moving the Royals, but I don't see very many larger markets out there with no baseball team and the Royals had a strong following when they were competitive in the 1970s and 1980s.

No, there are exactly 2 teams that ought to move, and they are both loaded with young talent who are stuck playing in ugly, empty stadiums in Florida. I'm sure Portland would be happy to take either one of them.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 28, 2008 4:29 PM

nodakdude:
Philadelphia could and can support two baseball teams. The problem was that the Phillies and A's both sucked big time so no one went to watch them.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 28, 2008 4:49 PM

10,000 roughly in attendance today. It's because a) a 12:30 game during a workday and school's not out for another week and b) it's too difficult to get there.
There are fans for the team, it's just in a lousy place to get to.

Posted by PaulW | May 28, 2008 7:46 PM

The ability of a market to support two major league teams has been one of the great imponderables throughout the history of professional baseball.

In the 19th century, the general answer is that even a large city could not. St. Louis had two for a few years until the weaker of the two collapsed. New York had two for a couple of years, both playing at the original Polo Grounds, but that didn't work out. The weaker of the two, the Metropolitans, played on Staten Island for a few years and then collapsed. Brooklyn has had a major league team since 1884, but it is arguable whether to count that as the same market as New York, and if you do, it was by far the largest market. Philadelphia had two, and even three, teams in the 1880s. They both struggled, both financially and on the field. With the merger of the American Association into the National League there was no question but that the Philadelphia AA franchise would be dissolved. Not coincidentally, this was also when the Phillies finally approached respectability. (Having Ed Delahanty didn't hurt.)

In the 20th century several cities were able to support two teams, but typically one was a weak sister. The St. Louis Browns are the most obvious example of this. The franchise moves of the 1950s were mostly the weaker team leaving town. The owners of the Browns and the Athletics and the Braves thought they would do better controlling a smaller market than they would sharing a larger one. The A's and the Braves showed a lack of imagination in the markets they chose, but once the Dodgers and the Giants showed the way, they got more creative.

The idea that these markets could once again support two (or more) teams seems to me highly doubtful. This has only been clearly successful in the very largest markets. If we could dismiss territorial rights with a wave of the hand, my guess is that a third team in the New York market would be the most viable such option, though there would be lean years while establishing a fan base. A second team in Philly? This seems to me a very bad idea.

Posted by Richard Hershberger | May 29, 2008 11:32 AM