By JUSTIN KANE
Tonight if you show up to Tropicana Field you can enjoy a free ticket courtesy of the Rays. The organization is giving away 20,000 free tickets to fans that show up. Last night as the Rays clinched their second ever playoff birth there was a whopping 17,891 the night before there were 12,446 people. After the game third-baseman Evan Longoria called the attendance “disheartening” and “embarrassing” and pitcher David Price via twitter said “had a chance to clinch a post season spot tonight with about 10,000 fans in the stands…. embarrassing” and they are right. As the American League East pennant race dwindles towards the end every baseball fan seems excited except for the city of St. Petersburg.
The Tampa Bay Rays, who as I’m writing this sit at 94-63, .5 a game ahead of the New York Yankees, are arguably the best team in Major League Baseball, but their fans don’t show up. If you turn on the TV and watch a game it’s shocking how many empty seats there are to watch a team fighting for the AL East crown.
If you happened to tune in on July 26, to watch Matt Garza pitch against the Detroit Tigers, you would have seen 22,000 empty seats. The Rays then were 60-38, 3 games behind the Yankees in the East. Oh, and Matt Garza did something no other Rays player has ever done, he threw a no-hitter. The announced crowd for that game, 17,009, since the All-star break that is the fourth least attended game for the Rays, which means there were three other games with less than 17,000 people.
Here are some numbers, in the first half of the season, after 46 home games played, the average attendance was 20,741. Rays fans stepped it up in the second half, so far in 29 games the average attendance is 34,865. That’s a season average of 27,803, that’s not acceptable. This is a team 30 games over .500 and assured a playoff spot and yet there are 10,00+ empty seats every night.
Fans, stop going to just weekend games, go in the middle of the week with your family, take clients to a game, do whatever you can to just go and watch the Rays.
WAKE UP St. Petersburg. Bud Selig and Andrew Freidman both have said if fans don’t start showing up to games, the city of St. Pete won’t be able to afford the team and would be forced to sell them.