Tropicana Field Revisited

Just over a year ago, I made a trip to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL (Home of the Tampa Bay Rays) for a Red Sox - Rays series. My grandparents have season tickets located in the upper deck just behind home plate (a location the yielded me my first and only foul ball). Anyway, the experience was not the best. This time I was bringing a guest who'd never gone to a professional baseball game. I secretly hoped that the experience wasn't going to kill any desire for her to ever return to a game let alone watch one on TV.

To set the stage, the Rays just needed to win one game to clinch a playoff spot (they've since clinched the division thanks to help from the Red Sox taking two out of three from the Yankees in the final series of the season, but don't get me started on the Rays fan at Busch Gardens who "boo"'d by Red Sox hat who had apparently no understanding that she should be routing for the Sox that weekend). They were playing the Baltimore Orioles, owners of the 4th worst record in baseball at the end of the season, who had been playing well lately. Just the day before, Rays players were complaining about the lack of attendance for their playoff push (which is a whole other discussion given some of the press and public reactions). Apparently, the complaints helped a little because attendance was up about 5000 fans.

Maybe it was the fact that the Red Sox are a bigger draw than the Orioles, but the whole experience was exponentially better this time than last year. Sure, the horns need to be banned (and a quick look at stadium rules would lead one to believe that they already are), but the cowbells didn't seem nearly as obnoxious. Gone were a lot of the annoying songs and even the Ryan Seacrest-wannabe was toned down. The Ray Girls were barely noticeable, too! Maybe it's because I was less invested in the game because I wasn't trying to focus all my energy on bringing the Sox victory (it works, I tells ya!), but the whole experience was far more enjoyable.

I've never had the opportunity to see any team clinch a playoff spot in person (nor have a gone to a postseason game, which makes me very sad) which the Rays did that first night we went. It was quite an experience. As a baseball fan in general, it's hard to not feel happy for the fans and the players, especially of a team who had ten years of last place finishes. It's nice to see a well run, low to mid-market team succeed.

Unexpectedly, the experience made me incredibly homesick for Boston. I didn't watch any full Red Sox games this year and missed nearly all of the excitement of any possible playoff chase (of course, the Sox did there best to make the last weeks of the season as stressful as possible). I miss the feeling of fall baseball in Boston and the excitement at Fenway. It was a feeling that stuck with me the rest of the night, made worse by the fact that it meant my team was eliminated from the playoffs (the Yankees won that night as well), and that I live in a city with no professional baseball (and maybe no minor league baseball any more).

The next day, the Rays gave away 20,000 free tickets for the last regular season home game. They were gone in 90 minutes. It made for an interesting dynamic (at least to me). Here you have fans that were supposedly annoyed at the players for calling them out for not bothering to support the team in the playoff chase showing up the day after the Rays clinched and cheering them on like they'd been coming all season. My grandparents said that the Rays' television audience is one of the largest in the league, so I guess there are lots of fans, but it seemed slightly hypocritical to have them cheer so hard and I wondered what the players felt about it taking free tickets to get fans to show up (incidentally, the fans started the wave in the 3rd or 4th inning. I hate the wave, but that said, that's WAY to early to start the wave). The Rays gave the fan their money's worth by getting shut out by the Orioles for the second time.

However, even with 35,000+ fans, Tropicana Field was tolerable. Maybe if I'm to enjoy Rays baseball, I have to have no rooting interest (or at least mild interest in Rays success). I extended a courtesy by not wearing my Red Sox hat to the games, and Tropicana Field extended on back to me.