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Marlins, Devil Rays become losing combination on field, at gate
06/04/2000
By Richard Alm / The Dallas Morning News
Major League Baseball looked at the state of Florida as the promised land going into the 1990s.
Look again.
AP
Tropicana Field was built in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1990, two years before Baltimore's nostalgic Camden Yards set a new standard for America's ballparks.
The nation's fourth largest state had plenty of reasons to make the game's hierarchy optimistic about the prospects for operating franchises there for the first time. There was a growing population, the longtime support for spring training, a large community of baseball-loving Latin Americans, retirees with time and money to spend, plus millions of tourists.
When the National League announced in 1991 that it would put a team in Miami starting in '93, then-commissioner Fay Vincent proudly proclaimed, "Now, baseball will blossom [in Florida]. Speaking on behalf of all of baseball, I say it's about time."
Charge Vincent with an error. The Florida Marlins and the third-year Tampa Bay Devil Rays are grappling with sluggish ticket sales and financial losses. On a balmy night a few weeks ago, the Marlins came home from a successful trip to Atlanta and were greeted by all of 7,832 for a home game against San Diego.
Things were hardly better a few days later up in St. Petersburg. The Devil Rays, with the majors' worst record, attracted 13,555 against Oakland.
Small home crowds are the norm for both teams. The Marlins were averaging only 15,329 fans per game through Thursday, third lowest in the NL. The Rays, at 18,051 a game, were fourth lowest in the American League. Thanks to interleague play, the legions of Marlins and Rays fans will collide in St. Pete on Friday for the first of the teams' two series against each other this season.
"You'd think there would be more support for baseball in this area," said Shuan Kern, a Tampa resident who had several rows to himself at that Devil Rays game against Oakland.
"There's so much apathy in South Florida with regard to the Marlins," lamented John Henry, who bought the team last year for $150 million.
Florida's attendance record contrasts with the success enjoyed by baseball's two other expansion teams of the '90s. The Colorado Rockies, who came in with the Marlins in 1993, rank fourth in the majors in attendance. The Arizona Diamondbacks came in with Tampa Bay in '98 and were nearly doubling the Rays' attendance through Thursday at 35,825.
Nobody knows why Florida hasn't embraced major league ball, but theories abound among team officials, sports consultants and fans.
Some contend that the sport gets lost in Florida's smorgasbord of diversions - beaches, boating, golf and an amazing array of tourist activities. Others attribute the meager attendance to the presence of so many transplants from other parts of the country. They didn't grow up supporting the Florida teams, and their loyalties often remain to other teams.
And most of baseball's top-drawing teams - including the Rockies and Diamondbacks - play in new, fan-friendly ballparks. The Marlins and Devil Rays are saddled with two of the least inviting stadiums in baseball.
The Marlins inhabit Pro Player Stadium, built 13 years ago as a showcase for the NFL's Miami Dolphins. As a venue for baseball, it's isolated and too large, with sight lines focused on what would be the 50-yard line. As an expansion team two years ago, the Devil Rays moved into St. Petersburg's Tropicana Field, a dismal concrete dome.
No matter what the reason, Florida's attendance woes give Major League Baseball what it doesn't need: two more financially struggling teams.
Bud Selig, who officially took over as commissioner in 1998, considers the rift between the sport's rich and poor teams a threat to overall financial stability. He's looking for ways to help the financial have-nots by enlarging the revenue-sharing pot, a tricky negotiation that will require transferring money from teams that are packing in fans. If nothing pumps up attendance in Florida, the state's two teams will be among those with their hands out.
Winning not the answer in Miami
The Marlins, as Florida's first team, started out looking like a grand slam. As an expansion team in 1993, they averaged 38,311 fans a game, ranking seventh in the majors.
The only time since then that Marlins home attendance hasn't declined was 1997, when the team stunned baseball by parlaying its wild-card playoff berth into a World Series victory. Almost before the team's victory parade finished, then-owner Wayne Huizenga announced that he would be forced to slash the club's payroll because of financial problems.
"We've never been able to establish a consistent track record," said Jonathan Mariner, the Marlins' chief financial officer. "It leaves the fans wondering what will happen next."
It started with the players' strike that wiped out the last two months of the 1994 season. All of baseball suffered for two years as fans showed their anger by staying away from the ballparks.
As the crowds started to come back, Huizenga went on a spending spree in '97, signing Kevin Brown, Bobby Bonilla and four other free-agent players to contracts worth $89 million.
Winning the World Series should have created the kind of buzz that would sell tickets the next year. It didn't happen in Miami. Huizenga, who also owns the Dolphins and the NHL's Florida Panthers, determined that the Series championship cost him $34 million in red ink. He promptly dismantled the team, trading away stars and alienating the fans.
Still unable to persuade Miami to fund a new stadium, Huizenga gave up on baseball and sold the team to Henry, a wealthy Florida commodities broker.
With Henry at the helm, the Marlins are adopting the strategy of other thrifty teams. They're fielding a cut-rate team. No frills. No stars. The Marlins of 1998 and '99 led the majors in losses over the two years. They began the year with a team payroll of $20.1 million, second lowest in the majors only to Minnesota. The team is asking for support and patience until young
talent matures.
Even with a small payroll, the franchise is struggling financially. When fans don't come, ticket sales decline. So do receipts from parking, concessions, souvenirs and sponsorships. Mariner says the Marlins will lose $7 million this year.
Despite the low attendance, Henry says he won't leave the market. He contends fans will show up if the Marlins build a new ballpark with cozy confines for baseball, preferably located in downtown Miami's bay-side Bicentennial Park, adjacent to the new American Airlines Arena.
"If they were downtown and had a retractable dome and focused on the Latin American market, I think you could see a successful franchise," said University of Central Florida professor Richard Crepeau, a baseball historian. "I don't think any of that will happen."
The Marlins' Pro Player lease extends through 2002, followed by a series of one-year options. In Henry's mind, a new ballpark will boost attendance. Higher revenue will allow the Marlins to field a respectable team.
But Henry has no idea how to pay for the new park. On opening day, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush vetoed the latest stab at winning public funding - a bill that would have allowed Miami voters to fund a new stadium with a tax on cruise-ship passengers.
Henry acknowledges he's at a dead end on financing. He is considering building a new stadium on his own. He says he can afford up to $100 million for a 25,000-seat ballpark, a jazzed-up minor league facility compared to the palaces that have opened this year in San Francisco, Houston and Detroit. Even then, he'll need public money for access roads and a retractable roof.
"None of that is workable without a roof, land and infrastructure," he said. "The question is whether we can be competitive in a small ballpark. At this point, we're open to any site and any funding plan."
Inside joke in St. Pete
The Devil Rays thought entertainment might be the ticket.
Last season, the team hired Mike Veeck to fill Tropicana's seats. Veeck is the son of legendary baseball impresario Bill Veeck and a promotional wizard in his own right. He tried to put some sizzle in the baseball business with the kind of antics that he used to sell out the St. Paul Saints and other minor league teams.
Veeck delivered the fun and games - including "Duck" Tape Night and the 20th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
It didn't work. Tampa Bay's attendance fell to 21,601 a game, down 30 percent from the team's inaugural year.
Rays general manager Chuck LaMar acknowledged that the first two years were a disappointment at the gate. This year, the team beefed up its lineup but got off to a horrible start and entered the weekend with an 18-34 record, worst in the majors.
"I don't think we can use the word disappointing [for this year]," said LaMar, who grew up in Houston and captained TCU's baseball team in 1977. "We haven't played well on the field. We've got to win, and the fans will come."
In an effort to put a better product on the field, managing general partner Vincent Naimoli, leader of a group that paid $130 million for an expansion franchise in 1995, opened his wallet during the off-season. The Rays traded for All-Star third baseman Vinny Castilla and signed free-agent slugger Greg Vaughn, center fielder Gerald Williams and pitcher Juan Guzman. The team hung onto high-priced stars Jose Canseco and Fred McGriff.
The team's payroll this year jumped to $62.8 million, 10th highest in the majors. LaMar said the Devil Rays will maintain their payroll, even if more fans don't show up. There won't be a repeat of Huizenga's dismantling downstate.
Win or lose, the Devil Rays are stuck with Tropicana Field. Rays fan Kern describes it with one word - lousy.
"I wonder whether there is real support for baseball there," Central Florida professor Crepeau said.
No one would build such a dinosaur of a dome today. The city-owned building opened in 1990 with no team in sight, two years before Baltimore's nostalgic Camden Yards changed the template for America's ballparks.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg area harbored long-frustrated big-league dreams, flirting with the Rangers, Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants before Naimoli snared a franchise. The dome represents the region's desperation - an if-we-build-it-they-will-come gamble that eventually paid off.
It took an $85 million face lift in 1996 to get the dome ready for the Rays. Tropicana Field offers a cigar bar, a center-field restaurant, a brew pub, a computer cafe, a softer synthetic turf and seats as cheap as $3, courtesy of a promotion sponsored by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co.
What it doesn't have, however, is fresh air, real grass and legions of fans. The Rays' lease runs through 2027. Unlike the Marlins, the team isn't looking for a new, fan-friendly stadium to boost attendance.
"Are we looking for someone to build us a new stadium?" spokesman Rick Vaughn said. "No."
Reviving Florida's baseball comes down to the dreams of two owners - a new stadium in Miami for Henry and a winning team in St. Pete for Naimoli.
Both are a long way from fulfillment, so Florida baseball figures to stay in the doldrums.
If business doesn't improve, baseball might well pack up its bats and balls and leave Florida.
"That's what it's going to come to," Crepeau said. "I'm very pessimistic about either one of them lasting."
06/04/2000
By Richard Alm / The Dallas Morning News
Major League Baseball looked at the state of Florida as the promised land going into the 1990s.
Look again.
AP
Tropicana Field was built in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1990, two years before Baltimore's nostalgic Camden Yards set a new standard for America's ballparks.
The nation's fourth largest state had plenty of reasons to make the game's hierarchy optimistic about the prospects for operating franchises there for the first time. There was a growing population, the longtime support for spring training, a large community of baseball-loving Latin Americans, retirees with time and money to spend, plus millions of tourists.
When the National League announced in 1991 that it would put a team in Miami starting in '93, then-commissioner Fay Vincent proudly proclaimed, "Now, baseball will blossom [in Florida]. Speaking on behalf of all of baseball, I say it's about time."
Charge Vincent with an error. The Florida Marlins and the third-year Tampa Bay Devil Rays are grappling with sluggish ticket sales and financial losses. On a balmy night a few weeks ago, the Marlins came home from a successful trip to Atlanta and were greeted by all of 7,832 for a home game against San Diego.
Things were hardly better a few days later up in St. Petersburg. The Devil Rays, with the majors' worst record, attracted 13,555 against Oakland.
Small home crowds are the norm for both teams. The Marlins were averaging only 15,329 fans per game through Thursday, third lowest in the NL. The Rays, at 18,051 a game, were fourth lowest in the American League. Thanks to interleague play, the legions of Marlins and Rays fans will collide in St. Pete on Friday for the first of the teams' two series against each other this season.
"You'd think there would be more support for baseball in this area," said Shuan Kern, a Tampa resident who had several rows to himself at that Devil Rays game against Oakland.
"There's so much apathy in South Florida with regard to the Marlins," lamented John Henry, who bought the team last year for $150 million.
Florida's attendance record contrasts with the success enjoyed by baseball's two other expansion teams of the '90s. The Colorado Rockies, who came in with the Marlins in 1993, rank fourth in the majors in attendance. The Arizona Diamondbacks came in with Tampa Bay in '98 and were nearly doubling the Rays' attendance through Thursday at 35,825.
Nobody knows why Florida hasn't embraced major league ball, but theories abound among team officials, sports consultants and fans.
Some contend that the sport gets lost in Florida's smorgasbord of diversions - beaches, boating, golf and an amazing array of tourist activities. Others attribute the meager attendance to the presence of so many transplants from other parts of the country. They didn't grow up supporting the Florida teams, and their loyalties often remain to other teams.
And most of baseball's top-drawing teams - including the Rockies and Diamondbacks - play in new, fan-friendly ballparks. The Marlins and Devil Rays are saddled with two of the least inviting stadiums in baseball.
The Marlins inhabit Pro Player Stadium, built 13 years ago as a showcase for the NFL's Miami Dolphins. As a venue for baseball, it's isolated and too large, with sight lines focused on what would be the 50-yard line. As an expansion team two years ago, the Devil Rays moved into St. Petersburg's Tropicana Field, a dismal concrete dome.
No matter what the reason, Florida's attendance woes give Major League Baseball what it doesn't need: two more financially struggling teams.
Bud Selig, who officially took over as commissioner in 1998, considers the rift between the sport's rich and poor teams a threat to overall financial stability. He's looking for ways to help the financial have-nots by enlarging the revenue-sharing pot, a tricky negotiation that will require transferring money from teams that are packing in fans. If nothing pumps up attendance in Florida, the state's two teams will be among those with their hands out.
Winning not the answer in Miami
The Marlins, as Florida's first team, started out looking like a grand slam. As an expansion team in 1993, they averaged 38,311 fans a game, ranking seventh in the majors.
The only time since then that Marlins home attendance hasn't declined was 1997, when the team stunned baseball by parlaying its wild-card playoff berth into a World Series victory. Almost before the team's victory parade finished, then-owner Wayne Huizenga announced that he would be forced to slash the club's payroll because of financial problems.
"We've never been able to establish a consistent track record," said Jonathan Mariner, the Marlins' chief financial officer. "It leaves the fans wondering what will happen next."
It started with the players' strike that wiped out the last two months of the 1994 season. All of baseball suffered for two years as fans showed their anger by staying away from the ballparks.
As the crowds started to come back, Huizenga went on a spending spree in '97, signing Kevin Brown, Bobby Bonilla and four other free-agent players to contracts worth $89 million.
Winning the World Series should have created the kind of buzz that would sell tickets the next year. It didn't happen in Miami. Huizenga, who also owns the Dolphins and the NHL's Florida Panthers, determined that the Series championship cost him $34 million in red ink. He promptly dismantled the team, trading away stars and alienating the fans.
Still unable to persuade Miami to fund a new stadium, Huizenga gave up on baseball and sold the team to Henry, a wealthy Florida commodities broker.
With Henry at the helm, the Marlins are adopting the strategy of other thrifty teams. They're fielding a cut-rate team. No frills. No stars. The Marlins of 1998 and '99 led the majors in losses over the two years. They began the year with a team payroll of $20.1 million, second lowest in the majors only to Minnesota. The team is asking for support and patience until young
talent matures.
Even with a small payroll, the franchise is struggling financially. When fans don't come, ticket sales decline. So do receipts from parking, concessions, souvenirs and sponsorships. Mariner says the Marlins will lose $7 million this year.
Despite the low attendance, Henry says he won't leave the market. He contends fans will show up if the Marlins build a new ballpark with cozy confines for baseball, preferably located in downtown Miami's bay-side Bicentennial Park, adjacent to the new American Airlines Arena.
"If they were downtown and had a retractable dome and focused on the Latin American market, I think you could see a successful franchise," said University of Central Florida professor Richard Crepeau, a baseball historian. "I don't think any of that will happen."
The Marlins' Pro Player lease extends through 2002, followed by a series of one-year options. In Henry's mind, a new ballpark will boost attendance. Higher revenue will allow the Marlins to field a respectable team.
But Henry has no idea how to pay for the new park. On opening day, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush vetoed the latest stab at winning public funding - a bill that would have allowed Miami voters to fund a new stadium with a tax on cruise-ship passengers.
Henry acknowledges he's at a dead end on financing. He is considering building a new stadium on his own. He says he can afford up to $100 million for a 25,000-seat ballpark, a jazzed-up minor league facility compared to the palaces that have opened this year in San Francisco, Houston and Detroit. Even then, he'll need public money for access roads and a retractable roof.
"None of that is workable without a roof, land and infrastructure," he said. "The question is whether we can be competitive in a small ballpark. At this point, we're open to any site and any funding plan."
Inside joke in St. Pete
The Devil Rays thought entertainment might be the ticket.
Last season, the team hired Mike Veeck to fill Tropicana's seats. Veeck is the son of legendary baseball impresario Bill Veeck and a promotional wizard in his own right. He tried to put some sizzle in the baseball business with the kind of antics that he used to sell out the St. Paul Saints and other minor league teams.
Veeck delivered the fun and games - including "Duck" Tape Night and the 20th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
It didn't work. Tampa Bay's attendance fell to 21,601 a game, down 30 percent from the team's inaugural year.
Rays general manager Chuck LaMar acknowledged that the first two years were a disappointment at the gate. This year, the team beefed up its lineup but got off to a horrible start and entered the weekend with an 18-34 record, worst in the majors.
"I don't think we can use the word disappointing [for this year]," said LaMar, who grew up in Houston and captained TCU's baseball team in 1977. "We haven't played well on the field. We've got to win, and the fans will come."
In an effort to put a better product on the field, managing general partner Vincent Naimoli, leader of a group that paid $130 million for an expansion franchise in 1995, opened his wallet during the off-season. The Rays traded for All-Star third baseman Vinny Castilla and signed free-agent slugger Greg Vaughn, center fielder Gerald Williams and pitcher Juan Guzman. The team hung onto high-priced stars Jose Canseco and Fred McGriff.
The team's payroll this year jumped to $62.8 million, 10th highest in the majors. LaMar said the Devil Rays will maintain their payroll, even if more fans don't show up. There won't be a repeat of Huizenga's dismantling downstate.
Win or lose, the Devil Rays are stuck with Tropicana Field. Rays fan Kern describes it with one word - lousy.
"I wonder whether there is real support for baseball there," Central Florida professor Crepeau said.
No one would build such a dinosaur of a dome today. The city-owned building opened in 1990 with no team in sight, two years before Baltimore's nostalgic Camden Yards changed the template for America's ballparks.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg area harbored long-frustrated big-league dreams, flirting with the Rangers, Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants before Naimoli snared a franchise. The dome represents the region's desperation - an if-we-build-it-they-will-come gamble that eventually paid off.
It took an $85 million face lift in 1996 to get the dome ready for the Rays. Tropicana Field offers a cigar bar, a center-field restaurant, a brew pub, a computer cafe, a softer synthetic turf and seats as cheap as $3, courtesy of a promotion sponsored by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co.
What it doesn't have, however, is fresh air, real grass and legions of fans. The Rays' lease runs through 2027. Unlike the Marlins, the team isn't looking for a new, fan-friendly stadium to boost attendance.
"Are we looking for someone to build us a new stadium?" spokesman Rick Vaughn said. "No."
Reviving Florida's baseball comes down to the dreams of two owners - a new stadium in Miami for Henry and a winning team in St. Pete for Naimoli.
Both are a long way from fulfillment, so Florida baseball figures to stay in the doldrums.
If business doesn't improve, baseball might well pack up its bats and balls and leave Florida.
"That's what it's going to come to," Crepeau said. "I'm very pessimistic about either one of them lasting."
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