(originally published 6/26/13)

It’s an archaic above ground tomb done up in turquoise and taupe, dimly lit and claustrophobic, settled in a gloomy dissonance from the relative paradise upon which it is settled.  Its stony antiquation and lack of sentimentality are a matter of public record, its seafoam pallor ubiquitous, its universal lack of reverence a facet of almost any conversation involving the franchise it so tenuously houses.

So why am I here?

I’ve shown up at Tropicana Field in downtown St. Petersburg to see the Red Sox play the Rays in the opening game of a hugely consequential intra-divisional early-season series, with my beloved, visiting Sox in first place but vulnerable, the Rays only four games behind them in the loss column, in position to strike with three head-to-head duels upcoming, and on this night with their stud young pitcher Alex Cobb starting the game, the future of their rotation on display.  The budding rivalry between these two teams, among the winningest in baseball over the last seven years, has become electric and tense, with the Rays, at times against all odds and expectation, refusing to back the hell off, already.  It was a big fucking game.

And the place was empty.

The final, announced crowd was 15,000, roughly 45% of the Trop’s meager capacity and most of them supporting the Sox, with small huddled groups of fans tapering into thin blotches as the stands rose toward the slanted dome ceiling – a sobering backdrop to the magnitude of the competition set to commence.

Say what you want, and likely you at one time or another already have, about the dreary color and the weak verisimilitude of the field turf and the peeling paint and the chilling vulnerability of the bullpens — which look like they were squeezed into the equation haphazardly when some bleary eyed engineer noticed while studying the blueprints in a drunken predawn stupor that they’d been strangely omitted from the initial design – the worst part of the stadium aesthetics are those Oceanus expanses of empty sea-blue seats.

So why weren’t you there?

—

The arguments have been so longstanding and pervasive and fucking tired that we’re already aware of the full record of antagonism and weird militant hostility between the Tampa Bay area and the Trop.  The debate has been aired with such belligerence and intensity that even fans outside of the state of Florida, who have never been to the Trop and, based on what they’ve heard, will never have any desire to go, feel like they know the Rays fan’s plight like a horrifying tragedy passed among tattered and tyrannized generations – the traffic sucks and the building itself is impossible to find, the parking’s a nightmare, the population density of St. Pete is somewhere between the corporate offices of pets.com and the Gobi Desert, and by the way can you believe that on top of all that it is not nice to look at – and what’s so unsettling about the inescapable permeation of these arguments, their ingrained nature and the subsequent acceptance of the picture they paint as factual reality, is that none of those things are true.  Not one.  Not even a little.

The park is directly off of I-275, accessible by something like six highway exits (which accessibility I assure you again is real and does, in fact, reduce traffic density, and the “traffic is heavy between Tampa and St. Pete especially during rush hour” argument is so ludicrous that it is difficult for me to even type a rebuttal of it without wondering what planet I am even on and why are you making me do this – find me a metropolitan area, in which all ballparks abide, where traffic is not “heavy especially during rush hour.”  That place does not exist, and most other fan bases have no trouble jumping the traffic hurdle.  Even with subway systems and public transportation, the length and inconvenience of travel is basically a wash), there are about 14 sanctioned lots surrounding the ballpark not counting the public garages and etc that can be found in astounding frequency in the downtown St. Pete area, and if once leaving the highway you still somehow can’t locate the ballpark, I confidently submit that you are a demented crone who probably accidentally dropped his tickets into a blockbuster return slot and who even in your stupefied state if you are able to happen across the towering slanted dome structure, visible from blocks away and whose horizon-stamping vastness is the source of additional bewildering derision, will try to seek admission with six mistakenly toted copies of “Throw Mama From the Train” and a half a stick of gum.

I am getting stressed out by this, and I haven’t even gotten to the most physically painful, emotionally cringing argument of all.  Are there really fans, or “fans,” mingling among us who will refuse to see their favorite team, or I guess “favorite team,” because they don’t like the looks of the ballpark?  I can’t fathom this.  I don’t want to believe there are people in the world of sports fandom who can fathom this.  It would mean the erosion of what it even is to be a sports fan.

Let me debunk fifteen years of rumor hoax and hearsay with one simple unrecognized reality: Tropicana Field is a great place to watch a baseball game.  Not good.  Really fucking great.

Beautiful, historic stadiums are special, but I won’t be convinced that the lack of one in Tampa is the reason for a constantly low draw.

The capacity is a gentle 45,000-plus, with only one deck in right field and two in left, if you count the slim “Party Deck,” which provides for great sightlines and intimacy, even from the outfield “cheap seats” (which idiom can be comparatively applied in a literal capacity to most of the seating at the Trop, but we’ll get to that later); the ceiling, that ugly cement aspersion that you constantly for some reason hear about, meets the stands at a sharp enough angle on both base sides to create great sightlines perpendicular to home plate, even in the far reaches, which themselves, owing to that design, aren’t that far from the field, either.  It’s intimate.  It’s climate controlled.  It provides a covering shelter in a part of the world that erupts in apocalyptic monsoon only roughly every five minutes.  The concourse offers concessions not only in enough frequency and stocked with enough staples to satisfy the most corpulent and drooling among us, the layout is easy to navigate, almost as easy as the streets outside, and the food’s close enough to find, patronize, and depart in the brief interim between innings.  Simple enough stuff, right?  Sounds OK, right?

So why weren’t you there?

Have we gotten to a point where, as fans, this isn’t enough anymore?  In this post-New Yankee Stadium sports landscape, of the retractable cyborg roofs and the three dozen steakhouse concourse and the club level climate controlled lounge seating that inexplicably faces away from the field, is the simple experience of comfortably watching astounding levels of competition in close proximity not enough to draw us to the ballpark, even at comparatively dirt cheap prices?

It is unfathomable to me that stadium aesthetics can play such a role in a fan’s willingness to see a game.  Does the stuff you go to a ballpark to do really require some sort of pristine sanctuary?  I am picturing the typical baseball fan arriving at the park, his two-sizes-too-small-and-unwashed-for-reasons-of-superstition-and/or-loafen-slovenliness already besmirched by coalitions of liberated sandwich condiments fortified under the collar, patches of sweat and beer-dribble blotching the sleeve, as he looks down his nose in scrutiny of the spot that by inning three will be littered by his peanut shrapnel and nacho waste, saying “Nope, this compromises my delicately refined sensibilities.”  Ugh, man.

—

I don’t want to believe that the playing field is changing (sweet pun; suck it universe) – I don’t want to believe that our expectations as fans have risen so high that the experience of a live game itself isn’t enough.  That’s a perception that, as a sports fan, I’m not ready to accept.

And I don’t think I have to.

The Rays have the fourth lowest average ticket price in baseball, the fourth lowest Overall Fan Experience Cost, a talented, exciting, winning team, and the fifth lowest average attendance.

Why?

Rays fans can say that the economy sucks and they’ll come when they have more money, and to a degree, that’s fair.  But does the Tampa economy suck more than it does in Detroit?  Detroit is 5th in the league in 2013 attendance; the Rays are 26th, and it’s cheaper to watch a game in St. Pete than it is in Detroit.  The Rays, as of this writing, have only three fewer wins, so it’s difficult to blame the attendance disparity on a talent gap.

Is Tampa traffic worse than New York’s or Boston’s?  You’ll find 30,000 Yankee fans and 30,000 Sox fans who are willing to spend an hour and a half and three subway stops getting to Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium before you’ll find 10,000 Rays fans willing to hop on the highway for forty minutes and park thirty yards from the stadium.

There’s a lot of stuff to do in the Tampa area – there are more activities here than in many other places that vie for our time and attention.  We’re a conglomerate population with a lot of different ingrained rooting influences from our own native geographies.  It’s okay if the market doesn’t care enough about the Rays to properly support the team.  Lots of markets can’t support a professional franchise.  That’s not a knock; it’s just a reality.  But don’t blame the lack of allegiance on the stadium, and really, really don’t try to lobby for public financing for a waterfront park when you cannot fill what we’ve just determined is the perfectly suitable one you already have.  You want public financing for a new stadium?  So it can sit empty like Miami’s?

You told us you’d come when the team got better.  The team is really fucking good, and you’re still sitting at home.  Don’t tell us you’ll come when you have a new stadium.  We’ve heard this shit before.

Despite what they might tell you, Rays fans don’t have outlandish expectations — they don’t ignore their team because they want too much from their stadium.  They have a great stadium that they use as a scapegoat for their own lack of interest.

It’s cheaper to watch a game here.  And for all the frenzied whining, parking and travel is easier, too.

So why won’t you come?

It isn’t that there are too many needy Rays fans.  It’s that there aren’t enough Rays fans of any kind at all.

Think I’m wrong?  I’d tell you to check it out for yourself, but you probably decided long ago not to.