The Tampa Bay Rays Do Too Have a Fan Base!

Tommy Pham, an outfielder who was traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Tampa Bay Rays in the middle of the 2018 season, said on MLB radio a few days ago that “it sucks going from playing in front of a great fan base to a team with really no fan base at all.”

He got it all wrong.  Tampa-St. Pete actually does have great fans.  The trouble is “our” fans only show up to root against us.  One Yankee player a couple of years ago was so struck by the number of Yankee fans at Tropicana Field that he said it seemed more like a home game than a road game for him.

And the same can be said of games against the Red Sox, Cubs, Orioles, Phillies, Pirates, Tigers and so on.  It’s so embarrassing that I boycott those games and attend only the ones against teams without a strong fan base in the Tampa area, like the Minnesota Twins, the Kansas City Royals, the Colorado Rockies, the Seattle Mariners, and so on.  Those midweek games only  draw 10-12,000, but the ones who do come, root (mostly) for the Rays.

So let’s put the blame where it belongs.  We are losing major league baseball in the Tampa-St. Pete area not because we lack a strong fan base but because the fan base roots against us.  It’s their fault our team will be moving to Montreal, Las Vegas, Portland, wherever.  

There is good news, though, because all it would take to turn things around is for our fan base of replanted Northerners to learn to love the team they're with.  It's a tried and tested process, after all, probably the very same one they used to choose their wives.  As Stephen Stills crooned half a century ago, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with."