There Is No Excuse For The Rays Postseason Attendance Disaster

The St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay areas showed once again they are truly pathetic for Major League Baseball. The Rays managed to shatter an over-100-year-old MLB record for the least number of fans to attend a postseason game. It didn’t help that the Rays were embarrassingly swept out of the postseason for the second consecutive year. There is no excuse their small groups of fans can come up with to justify this happening. People in St. Petersburg and Tampa cry about traffic, work, and game time. However, most of the other fan bases somehow work through those issues. There is no excuse that can be justified for the Rays latest attendance fiasco.

An Embarrassing Showing By The Fans

The Rays playoff game was an embarrassment not just on the field but attendance-wise as well. The team only attracted a crowd of 19,704 for game one. This broke a century-old record for the least amount of people attending a postseason game. Tampa would then follow that up with just 20,198 people showing up for game two. Heck, even ESPN broadcaster Sean McDonough chided the game attendance on air. The fact that Tampa can’t even sell out a postseason game is just sad.

Excuse #1 “The Game Is In The Afternoon”

The first excuse that people will give for not coming to a playoff game is the game time. I believe the fans created that issue themselves. The primetime games are reserved for the teams that can get fans to pack their stadium. No matter how good the Rays have been, they’ve consistently shown they’re unable to get more people to come to a game. Maybe if whatever Rays fans are out there showed up to more games, then they might get a more favorable time slot. There is no shortage of games to attend from April through October.

Excuse #2: “I Have To Work”

While I agree that people generally work in the middle of the afternoon, However, this postseason, the Minnesota Twins also played during the day with their game starting just an hour later than Tampa’s. Despite the middle of the afternoon game time, over 38,000 people fans packed Target Field to see the Twins win their first playoff series since 2002. Last I looked, people in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area work in the middle of the day during the week as well.

Excuse #3: “Traffic Is Bad”

The next common excuse people give for not going to Rays games is the traffic. This is by far their worst excuse. For example, the city of Los Angeles has some of the worst traffic in the entire country. Heck, from what I heard, getting in and out of Dodger Stadium is like trying to leave a major city when the world is ending. Despite the traffic, over 50,000 Dodger fans regularly make the trip to see Los Angeles compete in the postseason. If people in the Los Angeles area can deal with their traffic issues, so can Rays fans.

The Rays Getting Eliminated Early Is Almost A Blessing For Baseball

As a franchise, the Rays are consistently contending despite having one of the league’s lower payrolls. This season the Rays even won 99 games. What else do they need to do to get more people to show up to their games? The region once again embarrassed baseball by its awful attendance numbers. It’s almost a good thing that Tampa was eliminated early. I can’t help but wonder what attendance would look if they advanced further in the postseason.

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