Baseball's lemons

Sporting News, The, June 26, 2000 by Stan McNeal

Florida is a great place for people who like college football, oranges and mosquitoes.

It's a bad place for people who like hills, cool breezes and major league baseball.

Especially major league baseball. Of course, hardly anyone there likes major league baseball after the month of March. When the Yankees head north and the Braves leave Disney, the interest in baseball goes with them.

Maybe that has something to do with the teams that are left behind: the Devil Rays and the Marlins. By opening day, everyone knows there's a better chance for snow in Miami than for either of these teams to end up in a pennant race.

The best thing about the Devil Rays is that they provide a place for old sluggers to begin early retirement. This is a franchise that couldn't even get its nickname right. Stingrays would have been cool, but Devil Rays? What the heck is a Devil Ray?

The Devil Rays want their fans to think they have tradition. So before their third season, the club retired a number. It belonged to that famous Devil Ray, Wade Boggs, who had a grand total of 210 hits and nine homers with the team.

The biggest tradition in Tampa Bay is one of attempting to acquire a franchise. The area tried forever to get a team, Tampa often going one direction and Bay-St. Petersburg the other. When Tampa Bay finally got a team, it quickly found a home in last place and hasn't budged.

One problem is the home dome. The location alone is enough to make people in Tampa stay away. It's in an old part of St. Petersburg that is a magnet for traffic jams. The place was six years old and already needed a $70 million facelift. The Devil Rays, 25th in the majors in attendance, haven't had a sellout since their first season. One of the few teams with lousier attendance is the one to the south.

At least the Marlins have some good, young players. It's too bad so few watch them play. The Marlins play in a pro football stadium in front of crowds so small they could fit at a high school field.

This is the franchise that celebrated winning the 1997 World Series by getting rid of its players. When the team then was sold, the line of potential buyers could fit under a palm tree. How much longer the club will continue to hope for a new park is anyone's guess.

Baseball should do everyone a favor: Get rid of both teams. Disperse the talent. There's enough there to help more deserving franchises.

Let Florida keep spring training. After that, it's spring football season and the Devil Rays and Marlins are forgotten. Which is about what these clubs deserve.

Stan McNeal is managing editor/baseball for THE SPORTING NEWS.