And Nobody Came

Yesterday’s Rangers-Rays’ game in Florida had an attendance of 19,704, the smallest crowd for a postseason game in over a hundred years. Game seven of the Reds-White Sox World Series in Cincinnati drew 13, 923 fans, and that was against a backdrop of war and influenza. MLB and Florida look to be a match made anywhere but heaven. The Rays have been hard pressed to draw fans to Tropicana Field since forever, and now they want to build a new stadium, part of a development just like—wait for it—the Bears have proposed in Arlington Heights. Only the Rays are asking for more of a public buy-in, at least with the stadium part. Local and county officials are supposed to pony up $600 million, with the Rays contributing $700 million. How nice of them. And to think this could be the White Sox we’re talking about, if only the team had moved to the Tampa area in the late 1980s, like they threatened to. I can just see Jerry Reinsdorf threatening to move the team back to Chicago, or Arlington Heights, if he didn’t get the funding.