Some teams are just venues for opposing "old" school teams to show off their stripes.
For example... I went to a Tampa Devil Ray game at Tropicana Field two years ago (saw the D.R. play Baltimore and Boston)... these games were "home" games for the visitors. Must really be "fun" for the home team Rays when there are "boos" when the Ray's pitcher attempts a pick-off move to first.
Tampa held their own on the field, but they just don't seem to have the die-hard support.
Last Friday night I watched on tv the H-town Astros vs the Florida Marlins game. There must have been 4,000 total in attendance. Very much like the Expos games I saw in Montreal in '01. Brutal.
#23
Agreed. And, there's a very good reason for that....to many teams.
Lets make this keen observation...around 1967/1968...you suddenly saw the American really cool down and you could see that pitching talent was ultra rich...so the adding of more teams to both leagues was forthcoming. As you look around today...the pitching talent in either league really isn’t that great and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to see four teams dismissed...but the owners won’t do that.
I would personally like to see both leagues drift back to 10 teams each. You’ve got various markets that won’t pay to have a real team in town...and various wanna-be 4-star players who can’t play at a 4-star level after age 30. You are paying some guys over $5 million a year...who will never hit over .250 or hit 20 home runs or win more than 12 games...which doesn’t make any sense.
I bet most of those 4,000 had free tickets to get in as well.
One of the troubles with baseball is that the season is way too long. That leads to almost half of a season of meaningless games. By the time two teams have played each other for 3 series, everyone knows who the better team is.
If Babe Ruth would have played in as many games as they play now, no one would've ever caught him.
And visa verca? Remember the Brooklyn Dodgers? IMHO that was one of the first clods of dirt on the coffin of "old time" baseball.