Keswick_Crusaders_Forever51
Special Teams
Posts: 868
Joined: Jun 2019
Reputation: 69
I Root For: Liberty, UF
Location: Sanford, NC
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RE: Miami Marlins
(07-28-2020 09:57 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (07-28-2020 09:07 AM)TexanMark Wrote: (07-27-2020 04:49 PM)Keswick_Crusaders_Forever51 Wrote: (07-27-2020 12:45 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote: (07-27-2020 12:40 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote: If a team does relocate out of Florida, it will be the Rays, not the Marlins, IMO. That Montreal/Tampa Bay split concept was ridiculously awful. The Rays, while competitive, have an out-of-date stadium (Marlins have a brand new one), with limited resources (the Marlins have at least spent at various points, and won) and a city that refuses to let them out of their lease (or allow them to build a new stadium).
St. Pete issued an RFP for bids to re-develop the Trop site earlier this week. They seem to be ready to let the Rays leave.
I hate to see it, because the Rays are such a better franchise than the Marlins. But if they move elsewhere, hopefully it'll be somewhere they get the fan support they deserve. Montreal, Portland, Vancouver, wherever...all will be a big upgrade on the support they get locally in Tampa-St. Pete.
The Marlins are in one of the biggest markets in the country and don't draw flies unless they are in the playoffs (which they have been just twice in 27 years). It's deader than a Rice game or a Tulane game in the Super Dome.
What kills the Rays are two things:
1) Stadium location: Most Tampa fans live in the city of Tampa, while the Rays' stadium is in downtown St. Pete. As the crow flies, that's not a bad distance, but the actual drive is a bit of a haul. Had the stadium been built in Tampa, you'd see numbers more like the Bucs get (still not great, but better for a baseball team).
2) The New York, Boston, & Chicago fan populations in Pinellas County. These fanbases aren't exactly small in any city, but the amount of these fans is especially obvious in Pinellas, where most either move to retire, or for jobs in & around Tampa. My loathing for Boston teams lies in the number of zealous Boston fans I went to school & events with growing up, & these three fanbases take over any games that their teams show up to. Add to it that Tampa is in the same division as Boston & New York, & of course they're not going to show up to other games to support a team that could hurt their own. Add to it that many local kids like myself move out of the area for work & school, & suddenly you can't sustain a long-term fanbase while others overcrowd the area.
It sucks to watch the conversation become a matter of when, not if, they will move, but I totally get why they want to go elsewhere. I was born just a few roads from the stadium, so I will be sad to see them go whenever that time comes. For now, I enjoy the team from a distance & try to catch a game when I'm in town during the season.
I live 10 mins from the stadium. The sad thing is development is just starting to engulf the area. Museums, Condos, apartments, trendy restaurants, breweries, sports bars and dive bars.
You hit on the main issue. Tampa Bay (the body of water) is a hugely detrimental to drawing larger crowds. Almost impossible to drive from Tampa to St Pete in under 45 mins for a weeknight game.
St Pete just doesn't have enough population in the summer to support the team when you factor in half the baseball fans locally have allegiance to other teams.
On another note: time to bring the Gasparilla Bowl back to St Pete. I understood why they wanted it on grass for Bad Boy...but they are gone.
https://www.gasparillabowl.com/
Downtown St Pete is so much better for visiting fans than RayJay off Dale Mabry.
In the face of withering competition, I still think it's fair to say that no area has ever struggled for so long over the location of a stadium as Tampa Bay has over this. I lived in Tampa during the 1980s and that decade was consumed by arguments between Tampa and St Pete advocates over the location of a baseball stadium, and the area didn't even have a team yet! Finally, in the late 1980s, St Pete just went ahead and built their spaceship and lo and behold, five years later a team was acquired. Hooray! Except ... It's been painfully obvious since early on that St Pete (for all the reasons you guys mention) was a poor location for the team, thus leading to abject attendance.
But what's been happening the last 10 years is arguably even more ridonculous, because for a long while now even St Pete has basically conceded that the Rays stadium has to move to Hillsborough County, and yet despite that, there still is no stadium in Tampa and won't be for a good while now.
It's an almost 40 year farce that's still in progress.
Frustrating to watch the seeming incompetence
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