Steinbrenner Field, Tampa (If you build it in Florida, they will NOT come)

In one of the best baseball movies ever made, “Field of Dreams,” there is an iconic line that “If you build it, they will come.” It turns out that not just in the movies, but in real life, if you build a primitive baseball field in a cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa, they will come, as we found out. However, if you build a state-of-the-art MLB stadium in Florida, they will not.

Today we went to our second game in Tampa, last week we went to two at the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park. The total attendance for those four games was less than 35,000. Eight of the 30 major league teams are averaging more than 35,000 per game this year. Put simply, people don’t go to major league baseball games in Florida. The last time either the Marlins or Rays finished above 27^th (out of 30) in MLB attendance was 2012, when the Marlins finished 18^th. And that comes with an asterisk, since they had a new stadium that year, which typically gives a large boost to attendance for at least a year.

The games in Tampa didn’t look or feel as empty as the picture from Miami (just a few minutes before the start of the game!), but that was because Tampa Bay had a sold-out 10,046-seat stadium, and Miami had less than 8000 people in a 37,000-seat stadium for the games we went to.

Why don’t they come?

I spent some time putting together a spreadsheet last year, and found that the two things attendance correlated with most, for each of the four years I put together the data, were last year’s attendance and this year’s payroll. I added last year’s figures into the spreadsheet at the end of the season, and got exactly the same results for 2024 as for the previous four seasons I’d done. Neither the Marlins nor the Rays had high payrolls in 2023, and their attendance is consistently woeful. But I’m still not fully satisfied with that answer.

The Rays have been one of the most successful teams in baseball, in terms of winning games, in the last decade, although they have yet to win a World Series. So it’s certainly not the quality of the play on the field.

Half the MLB teams have Spring Training in Florida, so perhaps it’s a glut of baseball. But the other half of the teams spend February and March in Arizona, and the Arizona Diamondbacks, whose attendance is in the middle of the pack, drew just about as many fans last year as the Rays and Marlins combined. Incidentally, Arizona outdrew Florida for Spring Training this year, but only 1.7 million to 1.4 million. 

Being outside in the afternoon or evening in the middle of the summer in Florida for a ballgame might not be very appealing because of the weather, but the Rays have had an indoor stadium, and the Marlins’ stadium has a retractable roof. And it’s not that a stadium that is mostly an indoor stadium in the summer can’t draw. Besides Arizona, there’s also Texas, Houston, where the roof is closed most of the summer, and many other stadiums with retractable roofs.

It’s not the prices they charge. Including taxes and fees, we paid less than $15 for each of our two tickets for the second Miami game. Our tickets to the Rays games in Tampa were slightly more expensive, but cheaper than our seats in Phoenix, and in a higher-rent district (closer to home plate) in a much smaller stadium.

Maybe Florida just isn’t a baseball state. Tonight’s Stanley Cup first-round playoff game across town was in an arena with a larger capacity, and I’ll bet there were no empty seats for the ice hockey game. In fact, the state’s two Major League Soccer teams, its two National Basketball Association teams, its three National Football League teams, and even its two National Hockey League teams all had higher average attendances than either the Rays or Marlins last season. Tonight, even though the Rays announced it as a sellout, there were quite a few empty seats.

Or maybe if there were some cornfields in Florida that could be cut down, then they would come.

The game – will we see a no-hitter?

The story of tonight’s game was definitely Noah Cameron, the starting pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, making his major league debut.

A no-hitter, where one team doesn’t get any base hits (batted balls that allow the batter to reach base safely) are one of those baseball happenings that are rare, but not impossibly so. There are typically a few per season for the entire majors, the most in a season being nine (out of 2400+ games played). So if you go to hundreds of baseball games, the chances of you seeing one become decent, but you never know which game it will be at.

Cameron got the first Tampa Bay batter out, then the second one hit a fly ball to deep right field, headed toward the stands. The Royals’ right fielder made a leap, reached over the top of the wall for the ball, there was the collective holding of breath, and he came down holding the ball, having prevented a home run. I was thinking it might be a long night for the rookie at that point.

After six innings, though, not only had the Rays not scored any runs, they hadn’t gotten any hits. The Royals had one more excellent defensive play, by shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., but for the most part, Cameron was in command.

If a no-hitter is rare, a no-hitter by a pitcher making his first major league start is even rarer. In fact, it’s only happened once since 1953, and that was in August of 2021, in Phoenix. We know, because we were there. Late in a season that was memorable mostly for how badly the Diamondbacks played (they lost more than twice as many games as they won), Gilbert made his first major league start and pitched a no-hitter. Gilbert is not a star. He was a 27-year-old rookie, and has bounced up and down between the majors and AAA ever since, but for one night, it was magical. That was definitely on our minds by the 6^th inning tonight.

Cameron got the first hitter of the 7^th inning out, so he had eight outs to go. Then he walked the next hitter, then he gave up a hard-hit single to end the no-hit bid. The Royals’ manager immediately removed him from the game. The game was still close, 3-0 Royals at the time, and there can be a real let-down after a no-hitter slips away, so it made sense. The Rays got two baserunners each in the 8^th and 9^th innings as well, but never did score, so the Royals won 3-0.

How good will Noah Cameron be? He probably won’t be one of the great players (most players aren’t, after all), but for now, his career record is amazing, and it was fun to watch it unfold.