Bianchi making an ass out of himself as usual

[Paisa el Toro]

he is right.

I agree on this one too.

[deters-]

seriously, who can drive out to st. pete for half of those 10 billion games baseball plays each year?

They shouldve built the stadium near the fairgrounds in tampa or near ray jay

Seriously - why can't people from Tampa get off their butts and drive to St Pete?? People from St Pete drive to Tampa for ALL other sporting events and you don't hear them complaining about it all the time like those from Tampa do!  Do not say we don't support the Rays over here - WE do - Tampa does not.

because baseball is a sketchy sport were games can start in the early afternoon of a work week. They almost never hold a consistent schedule where it is open for more people to attend.

[Sunil]

Everyone wants to dump on Bay area baseball fans for not supporting the team...but this was consistently one of the worst run franchises s since its inception. In May of THIS year, foxsports rated them as #4 on the worst run franchises in ANY sport. ( ttp://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8098378/Top-10:-Worst-franchises-in-pro-sports?MSNHPHCP&GT1=39002 ) Until this year, the team had never made any inroads in building a fanbase because there was never anything to cheer about...save signing washed up players (Boggs, Canseco, etc) or the infamous "Hit Show". In fact, the past ownership was responsible for alot of ill-will much like the Culverhouse regime for the Bucs. This is the rays first year clearing .500, even winning a World Series won't fix everything overnight...but it will go a long way towards legitimizing the team as an option for the sporting dollar in the Bay area. I draw a parallel to our Bulls team...if we had been sub .500 all these years...we wouldn't even clear 25k in attendance and you'd never see jerseys and hats everywhere. The best way to exponentially grow a fanbase is by winning.

As for the stadium location, St. Pete rushed to build the dome partly to eliminate Tampa as competition from pursuing the expansion team. Even today, those feelings run deep within the area. However, the demographics are all skewed towards Tampa having a younger, richer population to support the team...as well as being geographically advantageous opening up the I-4 corridor. I love downtown St.Pete as a location and believe it's laid out infinitely better than downtown Tampa...but the stadium isn't really even in "downtown proper". The lack of shops, restaraunts prevent it from being a "destination"...and the lack of large businesses/dense residential around the stadium eliminates much of the "walk-up" crowd you see in other cities. If your going to the Trop, it's because you are going to the game, not really because you were hanging out in the area, or lived/worked nearby.

Population - (Tampa has 50k+ more)

Hillsborough: 1,099,832 Tampa - 303,447

Pinellas: 937,398 St. Pete - 248,098

Income per Household (Tampa makes 14% more)

Tampa - $39,602

St. Pete - $34,597

Age Demographics (Tampa is 4-5 years younger per age)

Tampa - 24.6% below 18, 10.0% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 20.5% from 45 to 64, and 12.5% who were 65+

median age - 34.7 years old (Hills County - avg age is 34-36)

St. pete - 21.5% below 18, 7.7% from 18 to 24, 30.2% from 25 to 44, 23.1% from 45 to 64, and 17.4% who were 65 +

median age was 39.24 years (Pin County avg age is 42-45)

As far as buying power - Hillsorough has 20% more population but collects 40% more than Pinellas in sales tax revenue. (http://www.majorleaguedowntown.com/userfiles/Media/Hillsborough%20has%20the%20retail%20hook.pdf)

http://www.tampachamber.com/ed_demographics.asp

Hope that the Rays do well in the Trop or a new Pinellas site..but these are the facts.

[Bruce Blingstein]

Great article.  Rays fans been waiting for a week and a half.  Thats friggin hilarious. 

How I see it is I am a huge baseball fan.  I moved here in 1997 and been going to Rays games since, being i love going to baseball games.  I loved going and sitting in the outfield with the 20 other people there. Yell at players and we knew they specifically heard us.  We would play New ball where everyone puts a dollar in the pot and every time they use a new ball (foul ball into the crowd, ball in the dirt, etc.) the pot got moved to the next man in line.  The person with the money when the last out happnened in that half inning keeps it.  So much fun, but a game you cant play anywhere else because you cant jump over seat and spread out across rows in stadiums where fans actually attend games.   

Now i go to games and there are all these so called hard core fans with cowbells (??) and mohawks (??) talking crap about me not wearing a rays shirt.  Im like guy where have you been the last 10 years when Ive been here, and im a fan of the 1) the mets 2) baseball 3) the Rays.  But still know and attended more baseball than these so called hard core cow bell shaking, died mohawk wearing idiots. 

Tampa fans ruin it for their teams in every sport, including USF. 

cowbells and mohawks ahahhaha that guy in philly is right, they will be ridiculed in philly and possibly beaten if they talk back for dumb **** like that.  Stay trashy Trampa.  Stay trashy. 

Go Rays! (for the players who acknowledged all year how bad their fans are)

Tampas fanbase is sad and undefendable.  4th worst attendence?????  only because they are in st. pete.  suuuuuuurrreee  :cheers

[flsportsfan83]

Great article.  Rays fans been waiting for a week and a half.  Thats friggin hilarious. 

How I see it is I am a huge baseball fan.  I moved here in 1997 and been going to Rays games since, being i love going to baseball games.  I loved going and sitting in the outfield with the 20 other people there. Yell at players and we knew they specifically heard us.   We would play New ball where everyone puts a dollar in the pot and every time they use a new ball (foul ball into the crowd, ball in the dirt, etc.) the pot got moved to the next man in line.  The person with the money when the last out happnened in that half inning keeps it.  So much fun, but a game you cant play anywhere else because you cant jump over seat and spread out across rows in stadiums where fans actually attend games.   

Now i go to games and there are all these so called hard core fans with cowbells (??) and mohawks (??) talking crap about me not wearing a rays shirt.  Im like guy where have you been the last 10 years when Ive been here, and im a fan of the 1) the mets 2) baseball 3) the Rays.  But still know and attended more baseball than these so called hard core cow bell shaking, died mohawk wearing idiots. 

Tampa fans ruin it for their teams in every sport, including USF. 

cowbells and mohawks ahahhaha that guy in philly is right, they will be ridiculed in philly and possibly beaten if they talk back for dumb **** like that.  Stay trashy Trampa.  Stay trashy. 

Go Rays! (for the players who acknowledged all year how bad their fans are)

Tampas fanbase is sad and undefendable.   4th worst attendence?????  only because they are in st. pete.  suuuuuuurrreee  :cheers

its pretty funny, same crap happened in Miami with the Fish. Florida Sports fans are a joke.

[Bullpride08]

The rays are easy targets and it's becoming a joke when a sports personality hops on the same ole tired issue.

The rays issue is they've never been good, I mean even remotely good, finishing at the bottom of the AL East 9 out of their past 10 seasons.  What makes it tougher is mid-week games are all about season tix holders, and corporations.  Outside of 2-3 teams in all of baseball, most teams, generally speaking during the week are lucky if they get half their stadium full on a weeknight game before September.  However the numbers provided by major league baseball are usually tickets sold, and not actual so you don't get the real effect.  In the past 10 years I've been in Atlanta and gone to mid-week Braves games without a prob, ditto for White Sox, Astros, and Rockies.  Most were half full, but their tix sold numbers were much higher because of the corporate tixs, and season tix totals were extremely higher than what was actually in attendance.

The Rays on the flip, don't have very good season tixs numbers, and the corporations quit a few years ago too when they had trouble giving away tixs.  So what you saw in say a late July weekday game were the true believers, and diehards (I attended 4 weekday games this year).

The phenomena will switch next year.  They'll get oodles of season tix requests, and corporate tix blocks.  The numbers will look higher on a weekday games because of those next season but chances are in April, May, June, and July actual attendance for weekday games will be just a bit higher.

As for weekend games this year the Rays attendance has been excellent.

[___ Eats It]

blah blah blah

Hey Mets fan:  http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/metsattn.shtml

Your beloved Mets barely drew flies until... when?  The 1969 season, and the 4 seasons thereafter.

By the way... stellar drop back to a paltry 9700 fans per game 10 years after the Amazins.

Most fans are bandwagon fans.  A team builds its long-term fan base by keeping some of them from jumping off each time.

[Bruce Blingstein]

blah blah blah

Hey Mets fan:  http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/metsattn.shtml

Your beloved Mets barely drew flies until... when?  The 1969 season, and the 4 seasons thereafter.

By the way... stellar drop back to a paltry 9700 fans per game 10 years after the Amazins.

Most fans are bandwagon fans.  A team builds its long-term fan base by keeping some of them from jumping off each time.

True....but they always were about average or better besides a few year than the rest of the NL. 

What really bothers me is the way the Tampa fan acts like they been there the whole time. 

oh and the Cowbells and mohawks are just really really corny. 

[813knight]

Now i go to games and there are all these so called hard core fans with cowbells (??) and mohawks (??) talking crap about me not wearing a rays shirt.  Im like guy where have you been the last 10 years when Ive been here, and im a fan of the 1) the mets 2) baseball 3) the Rays.  But still know and attended more baseball than these so called hard core cow bell shaking, died mohawk wearing idiots. 

Tampa fans ruin it for their teams in every sport, including USF. 

cowbells and mohawks ahahhaha that guy in philly is right, they will be ridiculed in philly and possibly beaten if they talk back for dumb **** like that.  Stay trashy Trampa.  Stay trashy. 

Go Rays! (for the players who acknowledged all year how bad their fans are)

Tampas fanbase is sad and undefendable.  4th worst attendence?????  only because they are in st. pete.  suuuuuuurrreee  :cheers

I understand what you're saying, I've been a Yankee fan and general baseball fan for a long time. I went to 10 regular season games at the Trop this year and a few Tampa Yankee games to watch rehab starts, most of them april-june before everyone knew the Rays were 'for real' and when I just wear a plain shirt to an alcs game, I got crap from a few people and I have probably been to more games this season than these sudden 'hardcore' fans have. I do think the national media is being too hard on the attendance issue, 10 years of really bad baseball won't draw casual sports fans in a football crazed market but I do think the cowbells are a little too 'white trash', I don't see how marketing keeps promoting that stupid tradition.

[BullsWinBucsWin]

Such a tired topic.

I have been there since the beginning for the Bucs (at least since I was old enough to know what football was), Rays, Lightning, and Bulls.  That being said, I welcome any and all bandwagoners to my teams.  It's not like we're running out of room for them.

Kind of ironic that we are having this discussion on a board in which most, if not all, of the people piling on the Rays for having bandwagon fans are themselves fans of the USF football team.  Ya think we would have sold RJS out for that WVU game w/out our own bandwagon fans?  Give it a rest people.