The official attendance at Wednesday night's Tampa Bay Devil Rays game was 8,801 - and the vast rows of empty blue seats at Tropicana Field suggested far fewer ticketholders actually bothered to show up. That is not a major league crowd, but then the Rays' owners appear content not to field a major league team. Managing general partner Vince Naimoli and new general partner Stuart Sternberg owe Tampa Bay an explanation and a timetable for making the Rays competitive before public support erodes any further.
Manager Lou Piniella, the hometown hero whose hiring has been the team's best move, is understandably frustrated. He believed Naimoli's promises to invest more in the team to make it competitive, and those promises have turned out to be hollow. It is instructive that Piniella directed his most pointed comments at Sternberg, who apparently is content to say little publicly and sit on his wallet until he assumes full control of the franchise. Fans who expected Sternberg to be the savior and turn around the team have been disappointed so far, and it would be nice to know his intentions.
No one expects the Rays' payroll to approach those of the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox. But the Rays' $29-million payroll is the lowest in the major leagues, and the team will not be competitive without a significant increase. A team with few identifiable personalities that does not have a reasonable chance of winning on a given night is not going to draw well or capture the imagination of the area.
Baseball is a business, and we do not presume to tell the Rays which free agents to sign or how to bolster the pitching staff. But perhaps Sternberg could use a history lesson in how this community pushed for decades for a baseball team, how its hopes were trampled more than a half-dozen times, and how Naimoli played hardball and finally won a franchise in 1995. But since the team drew more than 2-million in its first year in 1998, attendance has plummetted as the team failed to dramatically improve on the field.
Sternberg also should remember that taxpayers have a significant interest in the team's success. Millions of dollars in county tourism taxes and St. Petersburg city money go toward debt service on Tropicana Field every year. The city receives more than 50 cents per ticket, but the full potential of that revenue stream is untapped as long as the Rays aren't competitive. While the team is privately owned, it has a public responsibility as a subsidized monopoly to deliver a major league product.
As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers demonstrated, this community strongly supports its teams when they are competitive. Piniella, who came back home to help turn things around, voiced an entire region's frustration that the Devil Rays aren't there yet and that the team's owners appear more interested in controlling costs and making money than in improving the franchise.
