Rays Of Hope

I have to be honest -- I haven't been much of a baseball guy for quite some time now.

It kills me to write that, because baseball was my game, from Little League to high school to my freshman year of college. In my first semester at Cornell, I walked on to the Big Red squad, made it through three rounds of cuts, plunked a homer off a parking garage in practice, and then hung up my spikes in favor of a broadcasting career. Yes, I was a ballplayer, once.

Then, in 1994, Major League Baseball cancelled the World Series. Something about the '94 strike rubbed me precisely the wrong way at precisely the right time. In my idealistic 20-something view, any league stupid enough to blow its own championship wasn't worth my time (this was also way before the NHL blew an entire season). I washed my hands of the game, at the professional level, and eventually lost interest in baseball as a whole.

Time passes. I have two kids now, one of whom has already taken his shot at Little League. His mother, I may have mentioned, is a manic Red Sox fan. Baseball comes up in conversation at our house more often than ever, although the NBA, golf, even tennis is a more frequent topic.

A curious transformation is taking place, however. I find myself scanning the sports pages for information I previously ignored. I'm searching the channel guide on my DirecTV for broadcasts that, well, I'm surprised I'm searching for. Funniest dang thing has happened this summer:

The Tampa Bay Rays have made me like baseball again.

Yes, the Rays, the team that has finished DFL in its division in nine of the last ten years. The team once known as the Devil Rays, perhaps the single worst nickname ever chosen for a major professional sports franchise, with awful uniforms that matched. The Rays, who play in the dimly lit, awkwardly located, yet oddly attractive Tropicana Field (the former Thunderdome, Florida Suncoast Dome, or whatever else they've called it). The Rays, the franchise that has spent more than a decade waffling between embarrassing and irrelevant. Those Rays.

Except, they're not Those Rays. Not embarrassing, not irrelevant, and not even the Devil Rays. Not anymore. They're the Tampa Bay Rays, thank you. And they're for real.

I've been to St. Pete several times this season, in various roles -- filling in for Todd Kalas as the Rays host on FSN Florida, shooting interviews for a couple of shows we have in production, even checking out a game or two as nothing more than a fan. And these Rays, these young, impetuous, confident Rays, are making it fun again.

You can check the stats yourself. They can pitch, for one thing. They play defense. They're fast. They're aggressive. But more to the point -- they believe.

After Evan Longoria drilled a walkoff double to complete a three-game sweep of the Orioles last weekend, I asked him in a postgame interview, "can you believe you're 10 games over .500 at this point in the season?"

I loved his answer: "You know what? Yeah, we can."

The Rays are winning, and the cool part is, they're doing it with a collection of young, intensely competitive, preternaturally mature ballplayers.

One guy makes a great catch, the other guys try to match him. One guy turns in a clutch pitching performance, the rest of the staff bust it to hold up their end. Success breeds confidence; that confidence leads to friendly competition among teammates; the cycle strengthens. And there's manager Joe Maddon, he of the refined tastes and California-cool demeanor, pushing buttons with phrases like "the information is all out there." He presents his players with opportunities to win, and they accept. Simple, but it's taken this franchise over 10 years to get to this point.

This is no fluke. I've been there, I've seen it. They may not win their division, but this is not smoke and mirrors. It's too bad that the attendance is still so abysmal -- although if I were a Tampa Bay baseball fan, I'd be just as suspicious, fatigued, cynical, what have you. It's been a long decade over there. If the Rays are still contending at the All-Star Break, fans in that region have no excuses whatsoever, traffic or no traffic, history or no history. This has the potential to be the best baseball story of the last ten years.

Just the other day, I stood along the first base line at the Trop, waiting for Maddon to speak to the media. The Rays were taking batting practice. In the outfield, Carl Crawford and BJ Upton shagged fly balls. In the infield, Aki Iwamura worked on his pivot with Jason Bartlett. Coaches like Dave Martinez and George Hendrick kept everyone loose, getting in their digs. The atmosphere was charged, professional, relaxed. The atmosphere of a winning team.

I guess I was rocking back and forth, or maybe just staring, but one of our producers looked over and said, "you look like you're jonesin' for baseball."

Well, whattaya know. Perhaps I am, for the first time in years.

The Rays have made it fun again.

Those Fickle Fans In Florida

Andrea Adelson of the Orlando Sentinel takes on a risky, but interesting topic in Sunday's sports section: the historically pathetic home attendance records for the Tampa Bay Rays and the Florida Marlins.

"Risky" because she's sure to get flamed by readers in Tampa and/or Miami who will defend their cities' lack of interest, probably by citing a laundry list of bad decisions made by the respective franchises over the years. I get that a lot from fans, especially when it comes to the NBA. Disapproval over the hiring/firing of a coach, personnel decisions that went bad, questionable trades, dumb contracts -- fans will voice their opinions on such matters, more often than not, by staying home. It's a pretty easy position to take, especially if the team is losing.

As Adelson points out, however, the Rays and the Marlins are currently winning. Not only winning, but winning with low payrolls and, in the cases of players like Evan Longoria, Scott Kazmir, and Hanley Ramirez, they're demonstrating a willingness to invest in their own futures by signing key players to long-term deals. Still, fans in Tampa Bay and South Florida are reacting as they've done ever since Major League Baseball first arrived in our state in 1993: they're not showing up.

The Marlins are last among the 30 Major League Baseball teams in home attendance at just over 15,000 per game, while the Rays have climbed out of the cellar to 28th, ahead of the Pirates -- and again, as of this writing, both the Marlins and the Rays were leading or tied for the lead in their respective divisions.

The obvious fix, in the eyes of both franchises, is a new ballpark. To that end, efforts are already underway in both markets. New parks, and the new revenue streams they generate, can do wonders for your bottom line, but from a purely aesthetic point of view, baseball teams that play in Tampa or Miami can do a lot better than Tropicana Field or Dolphin Stadium. Having broadcast games at both parks, I can sympathize with the argument that a livelier, more fan-friendly environment would compel more fans to arrive.

But is it just a stadium question?

NBA home attendance last season: the Miami Heat were 8th (although this has become something of an inside joke -- lots of fans dressed up as yellow seats, apparently) and the Orlando Magic were 18th, despite cracking the 50-win mark.

NFL home attendance in 2007: the Dolphins were 10th, the Bucs 22nd, Jacksonville 23rd among the 32 NFL teams.

NHL home attendance this season: the Lightning were 8th, while the Panthers were 25th.

Now the caveats: it's an apples-to-oranges thing when you compare NFL attendance to just about anything else. Not only has the NFL set new attendance records for six years running, but you're only measuring eight home games per team per season. Comparing those numbers to the 41 home dates for every NBA and NHL team or the 81 home games for every Major League Baseball club is patently unfair -- NFL games are once-a-week appointments in stadiums that seat over 70,000 people, while the NBA, NHL, and MLB play every night in buildings half that size or smaller. Apples and oranges.

Also, those official attendance figures are most often 'paid attendance,' not actual turnstile counts, which is why I made the yellow seat reference above. In claiming an average home attendance of over 19,000 this season, the Miami Heat are almost assuredly going by 'paid attendance' or 'tickets distributed' or something similar. This is a common practice among pro sports teams. Rather than counting actual butts in actual seats, teams will figure out how many tickets were claimed for a given game and release that figure as the 'paid attendance' -- even if some (or most) of those ticket-holders didn't show up for the game.

Which brings me back to the point: could it be that Florida cities are simply tough sports markets, no matter how nice the venue? And why is that?

This is one of our favorite parlor games at the Sun Sports studios. Typically, the native Floridians (like me) end up on one side of the fence while the transplants who have lived and worked in great sports markets (like studio producer Jamie Shapiro, who is a Chicago guy) are on the other. Topic: why do so many Florida franchises struggle at the gate?

It's a complex question. The Dolphins, a perennial top-10 franchise in terms of NFL attendance, have history and success on their side. They're the oldest pro team in the state and have two Super Bowl trophies. We're now on a second and perhaps third generation of Dolfans who grew up with the team, and the passion that is handed down from parent to child generates a loyal, ticket-buying fan base. (And again, the fact that we're only talking about eight home games a year really helps.)

The Marlins, with their two World Series titles, seem to invoke the 'fan disapproval' response that I mentioned above -- yes, they've won before, but it's almost always followed by a fire sale. For many years, the Rays were also discounted for refusing to spend money the way other teams do. That seems to be changing, but is that enough to help the gate?

I've always believed that people in Florida would rather go DO something than WATCH something. We are a state of bare feet and green grass, of beaches and pools and temperate weather. Why sit inside an arena when you can play another nine holes? I'm reminded, however, that there are plenty of other fair-weather markets that can boast of tremendously successful franchises, so it can't just be a weather thing.

Simply put, the pro teams in our state are either very young, haven't always been competitive, or both. We're now seeing new generations of fans that grew up with NBA basketball or NHL hockey in Florida, but it takes time for those passions to translate into habits. I think our pro partners also get hurt by the fact that so many Floridians are transplants, and thus have already developed allegiances elsewhere. But again, time can fix that -- especially if the transplants' kids grow up watching a winning team down the street.

I sincerely hope that the Rays and the Marlins can get their stadium deals done, but I also hope that fans will continue to show up for those games even after the "bounce" of a new ballpark fades. I really do believe that our state, while huge and fractured and diverse, is a great place for pro sports.

Party's Over

Oy.

I really thought the Magic would beat Detroit in this series. I really did.

Here's a quick shot before my inevitable NBA season recap: in three of their four losses to Detroit, the Magic had multiple chances to put the Pistons away and failed to do so. Games 4 and 5, in particular, will go down as egregious.

Blowing a 15-point third-quarter lead in Game 4 was embarassing. Hanging around all night in Game 5 despite woeful free-throw shooting, chilly touch from beyond the arc, and team defense that oscillated between "average" and "sucky" -- well, I don't know what to make of that.

Except this: if the NBA kept stats for Loose Balls Corralled, Possessions-Saved-By-Hustle, Embarassingly Open 15-foot Jumpers, or Up-Stepping, the Pistons would have blown the Magic out.

A lot of that stuff -- running down a loose ball, tapping a ball back in play to keep the possession alive -- is "want-to." It's not a talent gap, and it's certainly not coaching. It's trying harder. There were too many instances in this series of five Magic players standing around while five Piston players made something happen.

But when an offense is run so precisely that potential shooters find empty area codes around them, when unknowns or nearly-deads like Rodney Stuckey or Lindsey Hunter become Step Up guys, that's something else. Pride, maybe. Cohesiveness. Trust. Unity. The intangible stuff that comes with a group that has remained largely intact for six consecutive trips to the Eastern Conference Finals. I'm not sure Orlando can compete with that.

But I thought they would.

The Pre-Pregame

Since Game 4 of the Magic-Pistons series is scheduled for 5pm on Saturday -- whatever it takes to make ESPN happy -- I found myself in a production meeting on Friday morning, a full 30 hours before tipoff. Hope we make it in time.

(Note: Saturday's game is a "side-by-side," meaning that Sun Sports will produce and televise this game right alongside ESPN's national broadcast. If you love your country, you'll choose to watch the Sun Sports version over the Four Letters. We'll give you the familiar announcers with the hometown vibe, plus the added bonus of me, potentially reporting something totally mind-blowing from the Pistons huddle. Hey, it could happen. You better watch.)

Usually, we hold these meetings on the day of the game, but with the early tip, we figured we could gather a day early and make it a more casual affair. So it was on Friday that I wandered into the Magic's headquarters, the RDV Sportsplex in Maitland, to hear what my assignments might be for Game 4.

Our roster included Tye Eastham and Kevin Patterson, the two gentlemen who produce Orlando Magic basketball on Sun Sports, plus play-by-play announcer David Steele, color analyst Matt Guokas, former Magic GM John Gabriel (who will join us as a special guest on Saturday's pregame show), sideline host Paul Kennedy, and me. We were lounging around a glass coffee table in a lobby at the Sportsplex, watching the palm trees sway outside as we waited for practice to end.

While still killing time, we welcomed Magic Chief Operating Officer Alex Martins, who stopped to chat while on his way to something undoubtedly important. Alex goes back to the expansion days of the Magic in 1989, and therefore knows John Gabriel quite well. In fact, I couldn't help but notice the high levels of expansion-era experience in the room -- Alex, Gabe, David, Paul, and Matty were all on the ground floor of this franchise in one way or another. That's a ton of Magic history in one lobby. For what it's worth, Tye, Kevin and I can all trace our connections back at least as far as the Shaq-Penny era. Call us the JV division.

As the casual chatter continued, in walks the irrepressible Pat Williams, best remembered around Orlando as the Magic's original general manager and the man who made the NBA happen in Central Florida. Pat still holds an executive role with the franchise and is highly sought after as a public speaker. The man can flat-out work a room.

If you know Pat at all, you know he's always on his game when faced with an audience. And so it was that he looked around the table -- at Alex Martins, John Gabriel, Matt Guokas, David Steele, Paul Kennedy, and the rest of us -- gave it a perfect pause, and then dropped this one:

"Wow. I hired everybody in this room."

Never mind that he didn't, really -- great line nonetheless.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing: the Magic are going to win this series against Detroit. This team is going to the Eastern Conference Finals. Been saying it for two weeks now, to anyone who would listen. It's gonna happen.

Know how I know? Because going to the Eastern Conference Finals would REALLY throw my work schedule into the washing machine. Most likely, it would mean live pregame and/or postgame shows on Sun Sports. That's how I know. It's been too quiet around here for too long. My hair has not been on fire for a full week. Thus, the Magic will beat Detroit and make all of us nuts again. Book it.

Gotta go do a pregame show. See you on TV.

Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game

"The reasonable criticism [of sports blogs] is of the tone of gratuitous potshots and mean-spirited abuse."

So sayeth Bob Costas, and so it shall be done. Wait, was that mean-spirited?

If you haven't watched it yet, the recent episode of 'Costas Now' that focused on the blogosphere is worth a few minutes. Specifically -- and this is the part that everyone is talking about -- you need to watch the exchange between Will Leitch of Deadspin and Buzz Bissinger, author of 'Friday Night Lights.'

Bissinger, who attended Penn and Harvard and therefore immediately earns my distrust (I went to Cornell, and yes, that was a gratuitous potshot), leaps off the top rope immediately and never stops swinging. Draw your own conclusions from the video, but I liked what Jerry Greene wrote in the Orlando Sentinel this weekend:

"Buzz committed virtual hari-kari -- and took with him everyone that has problems with the excessive and worthless nature of the worst of blogging. Wrote Leitch almost immediately afterward on Deadspin: "We just watched a man immolate on national television. To have piled on the carnage would have been discourteous."

Buzz later admitted he "subsumed the valid points" he was trying to make."

Immolate: to kill as a sacrifice; to kill (oneself) by fire; to destroy.

Subsume: to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one; to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule; to take up into a more inclusive classification.

The first one I get; Bissinger went down in flames. I drew the same conclusion.

The second one took me a moment, but I believe that Bissinger is admitting that his naive hyperfocus on one small aspect of the Deadspin blog -- the admittedly snarky comments from readers -- crippled his ability to objectively criticize the concept of blogging.

Leading off his counter-argument with "I think you're full of s**t" didn't help much.

What did this exchange accomplish? Let's take me as one example.

First, I read Deadspin for the first time, and thought it was pretty damn funny.

Second, I continued my long and proud tradition of never watching a single episode of 'Friday Night Lights' on TV -- only now I have the added benefit of believing the show's creator to be cranky, arrogant, hopelessly out of touch, and generally despicable. Which, I predict, will not compel me to change my mind about the TV show or rush out to buy one of Bissinger's many other works.

Nice work, Buzz! And it only took you 10 minutes!

What he did, of course, was completely and totally legitimize Will Leitch, Deadspin, and by extension, every other blog out there that attempts to accurately capture the attitude of the fan. He accomplished this by hating them.

Not 'hating on them,' playa, but simply 'hating them.' Because, Grasshopper, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

If one truly considers something completely devoid of any lovable characteristics, one simply doesn't give a crap and ignores said thing. If, however, one recognizes this nebulous 'thing' as a threat -- if one views the 'thing' as potentially dangerous, and therefore worthy of concern and respect, even as a target -- then one chooses to expend energy on this 'thing.' And that energy, class, is hate.

You have to care about something to hate it. Bissinger cares about blogs, because they are (in his mind) a threat to traditional media, an affront to true journalists like himself who attended Phillips Andover and wrote a book about high school football in Texas that got so many people so pissed off that he was unable to set foot in Odessa for several years. That, you see, is REAL writing. Simply pissing off the guy who went to Andover doesn't count, I guess. Anyway, he hates the blogs. Which means he feels threatened by them.

Should he be?

Yeah, probably. You'll read this one hundred times in the aftermath of the Leitch visit to Costas Now -- if you haven't already in the aftermath of Costas himself making that galactically stupid 'high-tech place for idiots' comment several weeks earlier -- but the upshot is this:

The whole blog thing? It's not going away. That horse, as I have written before, is well out of the barn. Those who 'get it' will be those who ride the wave, as most major newspapers around the country already understand. Those who don't get it will be those who feel threatened by it, those who, to be frank, are pissed off that their own hard work, education, and experience counts for nothing in the court of public opinion.

Because isn't that what this really comes down to? People like Bissinger are appalled at the mere suggestion that some schmoe who didn't go to Andover, Penn, and Harvard could actually produce something in print that could rival the great classically-trained sportswriters of our time. No, wait -- what he's really tweaked about is that more people might choose to read it.

It's the ultimate exercise in free press, this blog thing. You read what you find entertaining, not what you're told is "great writing." That scares the living you-know-what out of people like Bissinger and Costas, who admittedly worked very, very hard to get where they are today. But they're finding that reputation and resume' only counts for so much.

So in the absence of career-threatening tirades on television, what should they be doing?

Like we used to say in the gym -- if you don't like my trash-talking, beat me.

Work harder, Buzz. If the blogospheric (loving that word right now) audience is so important to you, as it appears to be, then show us something. Be more entertaining than Deadspin. Be funnier than Every Day Should Be Saturday. Be sharper than Bill Simmons. Go ahead, do it. Do it, and we'll read your stuff.

You CAN do that, can't you?