It is not the fault of baseball fans in Florida that they don't support the Marlins despite their 2 WS wins. They did firesales after each one selling off the key members of the team. Imagine the Red Sox winning the WS and getting rid of Beckett, Varitek, Ortiz and Ramirez. Would Sox fans be happy?
Also, the Rays have had one good season in 10 years. You have to do something at sometime to get fans to love you and be loyal. This is the first time that has happened. If next year, they have low fan attendance, then we have a problem.
#30 | Posted by bperk at 2008-10-20 11:08 PM
Well, to counter that, look at the Minnesota Twins. The cheapest owner in MLB history (Billionaire Polhad)and the Twins are still competitive and their fan base is awesome. The fans of Florida should either go out to support the local team anyway or not go at all. I agree tho that the owners should field a competitive team and they could achieve that by building from the bottom up rather than free agents (a la TB Rays) Don't forget Boston had a stretch of crappy teams in the 80's and 90's, but always drew sold out games. TB's attendance should see a strong uptick next year, but they better field a winning team every year just to hold the interest of the Floridian fans because to me it's still lukewarm at best.
www.marketwatch.com
I usually don't "copy and paste" , but here's a pretty good article on a possible armeggdedon-like scenario for our country. And there's a quote from John Whitehead, former head of Goldman Sachs, basically spelling out doom for years to come.