Originally posted by: Cuda1447
Originally posted by: ric1287
Originally posted by: brandonbull
Originally posted by: jalaram
Story about each city's fav sports team.
The Tampa one is the Bucs obviously, but I like the Ronde quote:
"How can the Rays be ahead of two of the top franchises in baseball history and still get only 14,000 some nights?" asks Bucs corner Ronde Barber
Some nights? How about most nights.
Because fans aren't buying tickets. Ask Mr. Barber if the Bucs are sold out yet. Maybe he should live off a normal person's wage and see if he can go to several sporting events while affording to pay for increased gas, food bills, electric, sporting tickets, home insurance, etc.
The weekends they pack the place and it's going to take some time to get the loser Yankee and Sox fans to switch to their hometown team. This area is full of those bandwagon idiots.
Well to be fair, TB basically gives tickets away and still can't get more than 300 people.
The tickets are cheap, but the team doesn't have a long history, the stadium is probably the worst in baseball, the target market is very spread out and a large percentage of the people that go to Bucs games live a good 45 minutes from the Trop.
Couple all of that with a rough economy (with tampa being an area that has apparently been hit hard) and you've got low attendance.
Careful though, 50% of all Bucs season ticket holders live in Pinellas County; not Hillsborough. There isn't a spot in Pinellas that's more than 45 minutes away from the stadium. And if its the time that's an issue then we can discuss the commute that most suburban ball fans have to take in other major cities.
We are football fans by nature. Not just a football city, but a football state. Proof? How about
only 600 fans at the Marlins game earlier this month against the Atlanta Braves. We could also use the fact that the year the Marlins took the World Series their average attendance was only 13,000. Average...
Second, and equally as unfortunate as the first issue, we have allegiance to our heritage. I didn't grow up in a northern family, but a vast majority of the people from florida, especially Tampa, came from the north and grew up in families that refuse to root for teams that their parents didn't come from.
Last, before we had baseball we had TBS, the station that showed Cubs games and Braves games, that's it. I still have fans that are hardcore cubbies fans that can't explain why they like them, even though that's the only team they watched growing up. And I still have friends that are convinced Tom Glavine is Christ Almighty with 4 seamer.
/attendance_defense
Ellsbury definitely was safe at first. Edit: One bad play call doesn't suffice for losing or winning a game. There's a lot more baseball than that.
Go Rays. What a great game. I can't believe they went 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position. I can't believe we held them. I can't believe how good Sonny pitched. I can't believe how bad Percival pitched and then he wanted to stay in and then pointed to Pena and called him an asshole after he crushed that three run homer to give us the lead. I can't believe it, but holy shit am I excited about it. What a fight. What a huge fight. That's just damn good baseball. We went more innings there then we ever have before, ever in the history of The Rays.
What good baseball. WHAT GOOD BASEBALL. Who here is really wasting their time watching important people get hurt in the NFL? Cmon, pay attention to good stuff.
GO RAYS