Upon Further Playoff Thoughts
As The Colorado Rockies push on toward a sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, ESPN's Jayson Stark has some interesting facts on the place their recent run of wins has in baseball history.
The Rocks are on a big-time roll right now, which would be getting even more press if anyone cared about Colorado vs Arizona. The fault doesn't lie with the two teams left in the NL, but with the Mets, Phillies and Cubs for failing to give their fans a team to cheer for.
The Colorado fans (who set an all-time single season attendance record which even the Yankees have not been able to best) are into the series big-time. Judging by this series, as well as Bronco, Avalance, and Nugget games, Denver is a pretty good sports town. Too bad Arizona clearly is not. Empty playoff seats are for WNBA games, not the NLCS.
I know I am biased, but I guarantee that plenty of the fans who aren't watching Cleveland v Boston would be watching NYY v Boston. Too bad the Yanks couldn't oblige.
posted by Charlie at 12:15 PM
5 Comments:
Calling Pheonix a "bad sports town" isn't really fair. The problem is that the Diamondbacks are an expansion franchise in a town of out of towners. The way people from the Northeast move to Florida and continue to root for the Mets/Yanks/Sox, Arizona is comprised of midwesterners who have just recently moved to Pheonix (for the weather and/or retirement) and continue to root for the Cubs, etc. Atlanta has had the same problem over the years with the Falcons and Braves. It takes a long time for a new franchise in a town of transients to develop a strong following. If either of us moved to Pheonix, we would continue to root for New York teams and the best the Diamondbacks could hope for is to get our sons or grandsons to become fans.
If I lived in Arizona, and the NLCS was there with available tickets, you better believe I would be there to see whomever was playing.
Maybe you would. And maybe you would say why should I spend $200.00, deal with traffic, get home late and be tired at work tomorrow to watch a team I don't care about? I defended Phoenix b/c those kind of sentiments about other cities reek of New York arrogance. It's pretty easy to sell out a ballpark when it's situated in a metropolitan area with 18 million people and the franchise has been around for more than 100 years and has won 26 championships. Not so easy in a Metropolitan area of 4 million people with a franchise that's been around for less than 10 years, particularly where half of those four million people are transplants who have just moved to the area in the recent years and, if sports fans, continue to root for the teams from their hometowns.
On a lighter note, how about them Giants. I'm starting to sip that koolaid.
Then maybe Arizona, Tampa, KC, florida...etc, shouldn't exist. There are baseball minds, and baseball talent in these organizations, but the cities dont have the fans. Florida and Arizona have won as many championships as the Yankees since 1997, but the stadiums are empty for games.
Wouldn't the rockies/indians series be more exciting if Miggy Cabrera was on one side, and Brandon Webb on the other? Couldn't Pittsburgh or Baltimore use Dontrelle or Hanley? Maybe if they can't field a team, and the locals don't care, scrap the team, more players and front office talent for everyone.
These expansion teams exist b/c the greedy, short-sighted pigs who own mlb teams can charge huge expansion fees to some rich guy looking for a new toy or status symbol and then divide the expansion fee equally among themselves without any regard for the impact on the sport or the league-wide diminution in the quality of play caused by expansion. Then the guy who bought the team has to operate on a tight budget b/c he is already out the franchise fee and the team has no existing fanbase and finds it difficult to get a following due to the restraints on the budget caused in part by the huge expansion fee. I agree that there should be fewer teams, but the bigger problem in baseball is the lack of revenue sharing which creates the large divide between the big and small market teams. What did both Arizona and Florida do immediately after winning the world series? Dump salary and rebuild because they lost big $ in the years they won by paying salaries they could not afford. KC is not a good example of a team where there should be no franchise. KC was a great baseball town and an incredible franchise until it could no longer keep up with the changing finances of the league. KC is an example of a team hurt by the lack of revenue sharing. The fan support would be there if the team had the ability to compete, which it can't because of the lack of revenue sharing and/or salary cap. Go look up their wins and losses and attendance figures in the 70's and 80's before the big market teams really pulled away from the small market teams when they began to rake in the big bucks in the 90's with their cable tv contracts (and now their own networks). I'm pretty sure that the figures will back me up here.
But I digress. This started with my taking exception with your calling Phoenix a bad sports town b/c it couldn't sell out games. My point is that if you're gonna expand into these markets (and I agree that there has been too much expansion), it will take time for the teams to get a large and loyal following and that it's not fair to look down at the people who live in these towns until the team is strongly established there. How do you think the Yankees' attendance was when they were playing in the Giants' shadows during the first 20 years of existence? Should they have been eliminated b/c they were a loser franchise which drew virtually no fans at the Polo Grounds? These things take time.
I read several years ago that an independent study done for baseball in the 90's as to what city could best support an expansion frachise based on population and wealth in the region concluded that New York could take a third team before any of the cities without a team could take a first team. Living in a wealthy region with 18 million people does not make us better sports fans.
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