Without a Shadow of a Doubt (or a Shadow of a Stadium) in MLB, it's Location, Location, Location and that's bad news for Tampa Rays. In my opinion, no stadium location in that area will ever suffice because the fundamental problem is there simply aren't ENOUGH middle-class baseball fans there to make it worthwhile. That area will always be the dog-chasing-its-tail when it comes to a new baseball stadium; @StadiumShadow, @fieldofschemes, @darrenrovell

All the geeky math on a Tampa #Rays stadium so far: http://t.co/7Cv8kqNRKB #StadiumSaga
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) August 10, 2013

ICYMI: What Bob Buchkorn & Ken Hagan said Friday…and what they didn’t on a #Rays stadium in Tampa: http://t.co/Dr682Kl9X9
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) August 10, 2013

@noahpransky That's honest, I guess. But hard to know what it's worth spending without estimating net revenues.
— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes) August 10, 2013

Mayor @BobBuckhorn: $200-$300M from #Rays would be necessary; city would need to kick in $100-$150M. (via @graysonkamm)
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) August 9, 2013

Tampa’s proposed $100m for Rays stadium is only worth half that http://t.co/D9ZnbWeKto
— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes) August 8, 2013

Tampa readies Rays stadium task force, now just needs any idea whatsoever for how to pay for stadium http://t.co/43krUgGt0v
— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes) August 7, 2013

@NickCubero @Rags2Rockets @JeffWMason @darrenrovell Tampa Bay Rays struggle to fill seats after winning. http://t.co/UAEY840vKF
— Troy Kirby (@SportsTao) August 9, 2013

Predicate reading for this subject is Noah Pransky's Shadow of the Stadium blog
http://shadowofthestadium.blogspot.com/ and Neil de Mause's Field of Schemes blog: http://www.fieldofschemes.com/

Tampa Bay Rays wearing retros tonight that they of course never wore pic.twitter.com/ry0J0u0KwF (H/T @sportslogosnet)
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) July 6, 2013

Much as I try to follow the Tampa Rays new stadium and attendance saga, in the end, it usually makes me think of the dog-chasing-its-tail, and the dog thinking that its making progress when actually it's doing nothing of the sort.

In following this story it's hard not to notice that of all the many criticisms of the Rays attendance problems over the years, many rather predictable, it's hard not to notice that many in the Tampa Bay area media are reluctant to say what I've always thought, perhaps because they really don't want to think about how truly insignificant the Tampa Bay area is in the whole national scheme

of things, baseball or otherwise. 

(And that's in NOT adding southern Orlando or certain Polk County residents to Tampa Bay's overall population to make it seem larger, as I have seen some places, as if to justify the current situation.)

The problem with the Rays isn't with the location of the stadium, it's the location of the team.

(Just like with the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.)

I don't think it matters where the Rays stadium is, the team won't draw enough fans regardless of where you place the stadium.

This is completely unlike the situation with the Orioles and their shift from Memorial Stadium to Camden Yards, making it much more attractive and reasonable to Washington area fans to go during the week.

Along with two friends, we controlled four seats for an Oriole 17-game mini-season ticket plan for the first 8-9 years of them playing near the Inner Harbor, and I personally went to 20-25 home games a year (out of 81) despite living in Arlington County, though those long weeknight games and the drive home to Northern Virginia often made me useless at work the next

morning until I'd had enough coffee with hazelnut cream to mellow me out, i.e. around 10:45.

In my opinion, Charlotte, Nashville and San Antonio would all do a better job of consistently drawing baseball fans on a yearly basis simply because there are MORE middle-class income people living within 45 minutes of wherever they put the stadium, because there are more middle- management jobs there to begin with. Period.

Those cities have a more diversified economy than the St.Pete/Tampa area and greatly benefit from that.

Tampa Bay is what it is, but diversified it is not, just like South Florida over-dependence on tourism and real estate.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

ShadowOfTheStadium.blogspot.com  

@StadiumShadow https://twitter.com/StadiumShadow

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/

 @fieldofschemes  https://twitter.com/fieldofschemes  

"This is what I've dreamed about my whole life" -Miami connection of Baltimore Orioles' future arrives early as Oriole's 20-year old star prospect and Miami-area native Manny Machado gets called-up from Double-A Bowie to start at third base in Thursday's Royals-O's ballgame, and 2010 First Round pick impresses with two hits in O's loss at Oriole Park at Camden Yards; #MannyMachado

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=23768641&source=MLB&gid=2012_08_09_kcamlb_balmlb_1

"This is what I've dreamed about my whole life" -Miami connection of Baltimore Orioles' future arrives early as Oriole's 20-year old star prospect and Miami-area native Manny Machado gets called-up from Double-A Bowie to start at third base in Thursday's Royals-O's ballgame, and 2010 First Round pick impresses with two hits in O's loss at Oriole Park at Camden Yards 

The Baltimore Sun
Manny Machado makes his major league debut — even sooner than he expected

By Eduardo A. Encina

11:57 p.m. EDT, August 9, 2012

He had replayed the moment in his mind many times before growing up, but Manny Machado didn't know exactly what playing in his first major league game would feel like. One thing was certain: Knowing it was a once-in-a-lifetime event, he wanted to make sure he was able to make Thursday night memorable.

Less than 24 hours earlier, he came off the Double-A Bowie team bus after Wednesday night's game in Altoona and be told by manager Gary Kendall that he was about to become a big leaguer the next day.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-manny-machado-debut-0810-20120809,0,6084272.story

See the Baltimore Sun video of Manny Machado at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/videogallery/71742592/Sports/VIDEO-Machado-This-is-what-I-ve-dreamed-about-my-whole-life

Great photo of Manny Machado at  http://network.yardbarker.com/mlb/article_external/manny_machado_arrives/11417719

See also:
Baseball America
Prospects Blog
Orioles Calling Up Manny Machado
Posted Aug. 8, 2012 11:56 pm by Ben Badler
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2012/08/orioles-calling-up-manny-machado/

Above, some of my tickets from the last few Baltimore Oriole games I saw in-person at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 2002, before I moved back to South Florida in 2003.

The Orioles are in it to win it!
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http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/

Mike Flanagan's death leads Ken Rosenthal to reminisce about what "The Oriole Way" once meant; WBAL-TV continues to get heat for Gerry Sandusky story

Fox Sports video: Fox Sports national baseball correspondent Ken Rosenthal, formerly a hugely popular columnist for the Baltimore Sun -and constant presence in the Washington, D.C. radio scene as well thru his frequent appearances- discussed on Wednesday night what Oriole pitching great Mike Flanagan meant to devout Oriole fans and how he exemplified "The Oriole Way" of doing things, an ethos missing in Baltimore for so many years that when I bring it up, people look at me like I'm a dinosaur.

http://youtu.be/kGadVyXI9Pc

For those of you who only know Ken Rosenthal from his work on Fox-TV game broadcasts, Ken is a very classy guy and a very talented writer who knows how to get to the heart of a story and share the context in an interesting and informative way.

Which puts him on a very short list.

If you don't think I shared an email or two -or dozen- with Ken while he was at The Sun...

Years before it was being written about just about everywhere, I told Ken about litigator and Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos' interest in pursuing the link between the use of cell phones and brain damage/cancer, based on reports coming out of Europe.

Rick Dempsey: He played 'The Oriole Way':

THE HERO!

Rick Dempsey, Baltimore's World Series MVP, October 24th, 1983

I could've predicted this criticism below in Baltimore Sun's TV critic David Zurawik's column Thursday, early Thursday morning when I sent my previous email with the WBAL video with Gerry Sandusky.

And guess what, he doesn't even link to it.

http://youtu.be/ayBjp9r7fH8

WBAL put the video on their YouTube Channel, which I subscribe to, but they made it un-embedded so that they keep it as exclusive. They have NOT placed any of their news stories about Mike Flanagan from Thursday on the Channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/wbal

Can't help but wonder if that's due to laziness or because of station management caving-in to dopey fans like the ones below calling and complaining.

Fans who even in the year 2011 think that because they see someone on TV or have seen them in person, that they REALLY know them.

You'd think that the cases of O.J. and Tiger Woods would've enlightened people about this ridiculously naive approach, but then even when I was going to 25 games a year at Camden Yards from my home in Arlington County, VA, for a decade straight after it opened, often getting home around 1:30 a.m. during the week, parochial Baltimore locals were STILL preciously saying that the D.C./Northern Virginia fans were "ruining things."

No, actually devout fans like me saved the franchise from irrelevancy and made the Orioles a big-market team (in a small market) by selling-out that stadium day-after-day, night-after-night.

But even that financial alchemy couldn't prevent Angelos & Sons from micro-managing and ruining a good thing, firing Davey Johnson shortly after he was named AL Manager of the Year, and they haven't been the same since.

(Davey Johnson being the last MLB batter to ever face Koufax, in 1966 World Series, when 'the Baby Birds' swept the Dodgers.)

The direction of the Baltimore Orioles -their glorious past, absymal present and rather uncertain future- both on-the-field and up in the B&O Warehouse, where Angelos & Co. brook no dissenting opinions, will be the subject of even more posts here in the future.

My "THANKS CAL" BUTTON FROM 2001

Cal Ripken Jr.

The ONLY new WBAL video on Flanagan storyline is this 29 second interview with former O's pitcher Tippy Martinez. http://www.wbaltv.com/video/28978855/detail.html

Pathetically, on their own website, as of Midnight, 2 of the 3 news stories about it are NOT theirs! The third?

The aforementioned 29-second video.

Thursday night on MASN, which I watch on DirecTV from here in South Florida, even though much of the programming is blacked-out here, after midnight, rather than show the scheduled repeat of the Twins at O's game, they replayed the Orioles' last home game at Memorial Stadium from October 6th, 1991, against the Tigers.

(A game that was commemorated by the Orioles thru seemingly manufacturing a million green or black plastic soft drink cups embossed in gold that were used that last series at Memorial Stadium. I had about five of them when I left a game against the Tigers that last week. But they were still being used at Orioles Park at Camden Yards so much into the next year that after a while it became an inside joke to Oriole fans.)

In that last game, Mike Flanagan came in with one out in the top of the 9th with O's trailing 7-1 -he struck out the two batters he faced.

And left to a standing ovation.

I taped the show and will endeavor to post some screenshots I took of Mike Flanagan here later.

I'll also go thru my Orioles stuff I have on hand and see what I might have that might interest you.

-----

Baltimore Sun

Z on TV

WBAL-TV stands behind Sandusky report on Flanagan and reasons for suicide

But police investigation offers different explanation for Flanagan's act

By David Zurawik

The Baltimore Sun

10:47 p.m. EDT, August 25, 2011

WBAL-TV is standing behind its Wednesday-night report by sportscaster Gerry Sandusky linking the suicide of former Baltimore Orioles pitcher and executive Mike Flanagan to him being "despondent" over being perceived as having failed the team and fans during his time in the O's front office.

Read the rest of the post at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-wbaltv-stands-behind-gerry-sandusky-report-on-flanagan-suicide-20110825,0,6876360.story

-----

I will try to find out what Beltway-area baseball maven Phil Wood, late of MASN, whose WTEM radio show I listened to every Saturday morning for years -like all my friends did, too- is saying about the Flanagan story-line all of this and share that with you over the weekend

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/blog/

http://www.youtube.com/user/wbal

Music to make the drive to Camden Yards more fun

With opening day for the Orioles at Camden Yards on Monday against the Yankees,

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/baseball/ I had a dream last night that largely recreated the adventures of my then-girlfriend and I driving up to Baltimore in 1992 via I-95 from her place in Northwest D.C., for our first Sunday afternoon game of the year.

We were so psyched for baseball after SO many months of cold weather, we thought we'd explode.

When this song came on 99.1 WHFS, now a sports station that's the home of the Orioles, http://www.whfs.com/ , http://www.1057thefan.com/pages/2005680.php

we rolled down our windows and started blaring this song out while we sang at the top of our lungs.