The Tampa Bay Rays are terrible, and the New York Yankees shortstop is Didi Gregorius, so you might expect that attendance for a Rays-Yankees matchup in April might be lower than usual. Or, if you work for the Tampa Bay Times, you can use it as an excuse to write an article titled “Smaller crowds against Yankees at Trop: Are fans tiring of stadium stalemate?” that features lines like these:
But, still, the crowds for the Yankees games were small. Does the stalemate between the city and the team have anything to do with it?
“It certainly may, but I don’t think there is any way to find out,” said council member Bill Dudley.
Now, there are two ways we could approach this. We could look at attendance in past years that the Rays were lousy when there was no stadium controversy, and see that they’re actually drawing better than in the bad old Devil Rays days (though this year’s average is admittedly goosed a bit by having one of their seven home games be opening day). Or we could just try to picture a Tampa Bay baseball fan thinking, “Hey, the Yankees are in town. Could be a good night for a ballgame — but damn, I sure am tired of the city council not letting the Rays owner break his lease and try to get a new stadium built somewhere else. Why, it’s a veritable stalemate! Stalemates are like ties, and ties are for soccer. Hey, I wonder if there’s any soccer on TV? Do I even like soccer? Where did I leave the remote?”
The Tampa Bay Times, interestingly, filed this not under “sports” but “human interest,” presumably because they don’t have a category tag for “clickbait.” Give them another few months, they’ll get with the program.
I’ll buy into the “stadium fatigue” argument, to the extent that the owners have implied on a fair few occasions that the Trop is, at best, untenable as a “major league” stadium — and at worst, a soul-sucking vacuum masquerading as a sports venue.
I just don’t know if late April, arguably the worst time of the year for baseball attendance, is the best time to trot that one out.
I would imagine it’s more like this:
“Why should I pay major league prices and fight the traffic over that bridge to go see a AAA team play badly?”
They actually play pretty well for a AAA team.
Here’s an idea, the team could pay for a new stadium.
There were actually two articles in local media on the subject. The article was the better of the two. This, by sports columnist Gary Shelton, was even more packed with cliches and nonsense.
http://www.saintpetersblog.com/archives/226221
I wrote about both of them on my site, if interested.
http://tampabaybaseballmarket.com/worrying-about-yankees-vs-rays-attendance-and-the-city-council-effect/
Kei, that’s exactly it.
I believe Neil has called it the “Loria effect” before? Just keep telling your fans how horrible an experience you provide at your stadium and how awful it all is until even the 7200 that used to schlep out to watch your team stay home and watch UFC themed reality programming instead.
Then demand a new facility because your attendance has dropped by 7200 and hope that no-one notices that it is A) entirely your fault and B) a physical impossibility for attendance to decline below zero.
Great work Stu… now sell the club to MLB and go buy the Mets or something… (sorry Neil…)