Rays Fans should be ashamed

The Tampa Bay Rays are one of the most exciting teams in all of major league baseball.  Not only are they exciting they are pretty damn good to.  As of right now the Rays are tied for first place with the Yankees at 81-50.  So you would think that Tampa would be absolutely crazy with excitement, well if it is they have a weird way of showing it.

Last night for the Rays-Blue Jays game there was an outstanding 11, 968 fans in Tropicana field.  Let me write that again, 11, 968 im sorry but that's pitiful.  To put this in perspective, last saturday at Oriole Park over 23,000 came out to see their O's take on the Rangers.  Look Oriole Park is beautiful but the fact that a team 30 games under .500 can draw more that a team in the thick of a pennant race is messed up.  Now ive heard numerous reasons on why the Rays don't draw well and to be honest I don't really believe those to be plausible ones.  First, I can't speak on this by experience but Tropicana is not one of the nicest stadiums out there.  That wouldn't bother me, the Orioles could play on a parking lot but if they were 81-50 I would watch them.  Another reason ive heard a lot is there is too much to do in Florida.  Well if that's the case it was Major League Baseball's fault for putting a second MLB franchise in Florida.  In case you havent noticed the Marlins have horrible attendance numbers as well despite two world titles.  Whatever excuse Tampa fans want to use it doesn't make it any better when you see 11,000 fans in the stadium.  Think about all the struggling franchises who would love to have a team like the Rays.  Do you think cities like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland among others would only have 10,000 people in the stands with a first place team?, I doubt it.  I am not saying the Rays fans don't care but that's the perception they are putting on.  If Rays fans don't come out to see the team now they might be seeing a much different team next year as Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena will enter free agency.