Longoria’s walk-off home run instantly is one of the most famous regular season home runs in baseball history, right up there in the company of Hank Aaron’s pennant-clinching homer for Milwaukee in 1957 or — this is not as heretical as you might think — Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard Round The World in 1951. It lacks only the New York amplification of Thomson’s homer. It makes Longoria, already one of the game’s great players, a transcendent cultural player.
There is Dan Johnson, whose unknown baseball life suddenly is forever preserved in baseball lore. There is Robert Andino, who forever is an enemy of the state in Red Sox Nation. There is Joe Maddon, the wild-haired bespectacled nutty professor of a manager who just pulled off the greatest September comeback in history on a shoestring budget, baling wire, duct tape and a sense of humor and perspective not even possible anymore in Boston with the expectations on the high-rolling Red Sox.
I thought this last night. Teams need these moments that establish their lore. For the Rays, a team that have been to the World Series but play in an old stadium in a market where they are largely forgotten, this was the kind of moment that solidifies a franchise’s history and establishes them into baseball history forever.
I was happy to witness it.
We’ve been playing great baseball all year. Since I’ve been here in [2006], the fans have wanted a good baseball team. They’ve wanted to watch a contender,” Longoria told reporters. “And for us to play good baseball for three years now, and for us to be in a spot to clinch again and go to the playoffs, we’re all confused as to why it’s only 15,000 to 20,000 in the building.
Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays wonder where all the fans are
Move this team to New Jersey, already. Best record in baseball, great young talent and a fun squad to watch and what do they get? No support. This is just the Expos revisited, albeit with better management. That dome is a mausoleum and the situation isn’t going to improve, it’s just going to get worse. They’ll never get a new stadium down there and I predict they’ll be gone within five years. Leases in pro sports are just a piece of paper.
The Tampa Bay Rays have no fans
The link is to an ESPN article about how despite the team’s success, fans don’t come out.
Here’s a local newspaper article about the Rays saying history suggests they won’t move anywhere before their lease ends in 2027. But I don’t buy that. Of course, I’m a Toronto Blue Jays fan and I would be surprised if they lasted in that city another 20 years either. SkyDome won’t be gleaming forever…though I could see political will to keep them there and there won’t be any dearth of deep pockets like Montreal.
Just move the Rays to New Jersey already and change their horrendous name. The NYC market is gargantuan, and why keep the team in a market that despite it’s media market size has a hard time putting butts in the seats. The Marlins already held up their taxpayers for a new stadium, so we know they’re not going anywhere.
They can share a stadium with another team. Not so much CitiField with the Mets, but perhaps Citizens Bank Park with the Phillies, since Philadelphia is the largest baseball market with only one team in it. Boston would be great, given how much Fenway is sold out, but only if they could be moved to the NL.
The Trop is an awful place to watch a baseball game and came before the stadium boom or else it’d look a lot better. Bottom line is, there’s no reason for the team to draw as poorly as it does with all of those stars on it and if it were in a better baseball market, they’d be doing a lot better.
Couple that with the ownership group’s ties to NYC and I feel like if Washington D.C. could get a team, a deal could be worked out eventually for a 3rd team in NYC, but not under the regime of Selig, it’ll take a new Commissioner with some vision to orchestrate that. Just put them on SNY or YES and the Yankees and Mets will get over it.
