The Florida Marlins Have No Fans

[RightFieldCoder]

Maybe they should hold a sale for the rights of the team. The first city to pass a plan for a stadium and start construction wins the team. Iirc, that's what Milwaukee did with building County Stadium and that caused the Braves to move here. And just like County Stadium, then the city/county/state own the building. If the team wants to own the stadium they need to pay for it themselves.

[zachjack13]

That is just too sad. My brother is a Marlins fan and even he couldn't believe how much they don't care. I don't know if anyone mentioned these places, but how about Richmond, VA or Iowa City?

[DuWayne Steurer]

That is just too sad. My brother is a Marlins fan and even he couldn't believe how much they don't care. I don't know if anyone mentioned these places, but how about Richmond, VA or Iowa City?

 

 

 

Iowa City is way too small to hold any major sport franchise (65,000 people). Even Des Moines, over 500K is considered a "small market" compared to most major sport team cities. Aside from that, most of eastern Iowa is already pretty strong "Cub territory".

 

[Mr QL]

San Antonio would probably be where a new team would end up. They want another sports team bad.

[jlau20]

That's what I've heard too. I'm sure part of it has to do with the fact they are home to the one of the most boring yet dominant franchises ever. I can't blame them, sure those NBA titles are nice and all...but a. it's the NBA, b. their star player is called the big fundamental.

[Zycho32]

You say 'NBA' as if everybody in the league should be a showboating piece of ghetto trash that are all about the 'Bling Bling' and appeasing their own egos.

 

Seriously, nobody's been smart enough yet to mold a competing dynasty that can stay in step with the Spurs over a span of years. They all seem to suffer implosions after a short while.

 

...I wonder if this will get me banned.

[mothershipconnection]

I think San Antonio makes a great deal of sense as well. The metro area has grown by 13.5% from 2000 to 2006 and is near Austin, which grew by 21.11%. There's also a great deal of money in TX to support the team. They're only 3 hours from Houston, but that hasn't stopped the Rangers from being successful.

[TooLiveBrew]

I couldn't see, under almost any circumstances, why San Anton' wouldn't be the first choice. It just makes so much sense, plus it's a great city to boot.

[owbc]

San Antonio would be an excellent choice, but it still would mess up the divisions, as SA would be quite a traveling distance for the other NL East teams.

 

If so, I would move Pittsburgh to the NL East to enhance the Phillies/Pirates rivalry and place SA in the NL Central to create a new Houston/SA rivalry.

 

This addition would make the "Texas Rangers" seem like an odd team name though, with two other MLB teams in the state.

[kiwi brewer]

so, the question is... how many fans will be there for the cubs' series in the final week of the season? and the percentage of cubs fans v.s. marlins fans?

 

i am guessing it's 75-25 cubs fans... with a total of 20k people... ? it may be a very eerie series to watch, being a mostly empty stadium in the thick of a pennant race... could be weird.

[SeriesFinale]

I don't know what Kurt has against Florida, but I'm just going to repost my response to him from the "Contraction Draft" thread of a few weeks back. Still pertinent:

 

SeriesFinale wrote:

---

How great would it be to get MLB out of the sorry state of Florida!?

A lot of people think Milwaukee's a crummy place, too, for baseball and otherwise.

 

I grew up in Sarasota, and while the Marlins don't have much of an excuse, I feel like baseball and the franchise in Tampa Bay was never given a fair shake. This is a team that has never won more than 70 games, has three 100+ loss seasons and maybe one more this year (and two 99 loss seasons!). No wonder no one is coming out. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.

 

The area was treated like a pawn for more than a decade by every team wanting a new stadium (we came within minutes of the Tampa Bay White Sox, for one) and people were already pretty bitter about MLB by the team the team was awarded. Fair enough, that's in the past, but then when they finally get the team they're saddled with incredibly awful management (the Devil Rays franchise may literally never recover from the Naimoli/LaMar reign of incompetence) and born into what was already an out-of-date, uncomfortable stadium and a brutal division that said awful management begged for. Most folks from that area are from somewhere else, with fan baggage from elsewhere, but like everywhere else they'll pull for a winner and they'll rally around their new local winning team like they did with the Bucs in the 90s and Phoenix did with the D-Backs. But they haven't gotten there yet.

 

I say MLB needs to have a Tampa Bay team finish within at least a few games of .500 in their existence before they deem baseball not feasible down there.

[Invader3K]

I would love to see a Tampa Bay game in person someday, to try one of the premium leather seats behind home plate and enjoy the free parking they offer. You can't claim they're not trying to draw people by doing some unique stuff, at least.

[CSOM]

I couldn't see, under almost any circumstances, why San Anton' wouldn't be the first choice. It just makes so much sense, plus it's a great city to boot.

San An isn't really that great of a city... the riverwalk is nice, but elsewhere? They would get some draw from Austin, but not much... that's football country through there and Austin is still about 40 miles away, depending on where they would put a stadium.

 

The Astros and Rangers draw well, but remember both markets are about 6 million people. San Antonio/Austin is about half of that. I was at a Marlins game last year or the year before (can't remember) here in Houston and Jeffrey Loria was there was a big contingency from San Antonio to watch the game, but the word after the game from those that I spoke with that new about the situation was that Loria didn't believe SA could work.

[TooLiveBrew]

Well, he's also the one that felt Miami would work. Too bad there's a dummy captaining that ship.

[1992casey]

You say 'NBA' as if everybody in the league should be a showboating piece of ghetto trash...

"Getto trash" is certainly a term that has to be handled with care. On one hand, it's being used as an example or an analogy more than being actual name-calling. On the other hand, it's still a slur. This sits the line as to whether or not its use is a violation, but I'd submit that its use is very likely ill-advised.

...I wonder if this will get me banned.

This is really the more problematic part of the post. At first glance, it looks like the mods as a group are being taunted or challenged. For the sake of giving the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume it's being used in a 'thinking out loud' type of way.

[Invader3K]

I'd love to see Portland get a team, just so MLB can't hold them up as a threat to other cities anymore.

[Zycho32]

It was a 'thinking out loud' sentence, actually. I never get good results when my mouth- or my fingers for that matter- move faster than my brain.