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Gothamite

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Everything posted by Gothamite

  1. Gothamite
    The Tampa Bay Times has a long take on this, worth reading. https://www.tampabay.com/sports/rays/2019/06/22/the-rays-montreal-plan-a-peek-behind-the-curtain/ Good photos too, including this one: In this file photo, Jim Anderson, St. Petersburg Times pressroom superintendent, holds up a copy of an Aug. 8, 1992 edition of the St. Petersburg Times that commemorates a deal that would have moved the San Francisco Giants to the Tampa Bay area. [Associated Press]
  2. Gothamite
    A little bit, not much. Nor did they get a significant attendance boost the year after, which often happens. The attendance was maybe a little less bad during their amazing run, but it sure as hell didn't even begin to approach "good". Year No of Home Games Total Attendance Average Attendance Rank 2007 81 1,387,603 17,130 29 out of 30 2008 80 1,780,791 22,259 26 out of 30 2009 81 1,874,962 23,147 23 out of 30
  3. Gothamite
    Interestingly enough, after the Rays had won the AL pennant they still weren’t more popular than the Yankees in the Tampa Bay area. Nor were they more popular than the Red Sox; one of the best teams in baseball was the third-favorite team among baseball fans in its own town.
  4. Gothamite
    And yet after the first fire sale they won a second world championship. Really finding it hard to be too sympathetic about that one.
  5. Gothamite
    I know it sucks to lose your favorite player. But fans of all teams lose their favorite players all the time, and they don’t get two world championships out of it. Only, what, four other teams have been able to repeat in the years since?
  6. Gothamite
    For all the bitching about the first file sale, they went back to and won a second World Series. Hard to feel too sorry for them.
  7. Gothamite
    I get that people were turned off by ownership, but in any other market winning a lot and going to a World Series would put hard feelings aside. I can’t think of another market so indifferent to its team. So indifferent that its own players have to call it out.
  8. Gothamite
    In retrospect, not a good expansion choice. They’re a distant third favorite in their own market.
  9. Gothamite
    The telling thing here is that MLB is saying baseball in Tampa Bay can't work out even with a new stadium. Yikes.
  10. Gothamite
    Same with the Yankees. Pointless, unnecessary trim that only clutters and ruins a great design.
  11. Gothamite
    For at least the last ten years, Oakland has been using just the name “Raiders” on most merchandise.
  12. Gothamite
    I’m not, either. There are only so many AA teams to go around, and I don’t know how New Orleans is going to lure one without new facilities.
  13. Gothamite
    Arte Mareno said that it did. He said that corporate partners and sponsors weren’t willing to pay as much to an “Anaheim” team as they are to a “Los Angeles” team. We have no way of proving or disproving that, but neither do we have any reason not to take him at his word.
  14. Gothamite
    Again, this is why teams do it.
  15. Gothamite
    Nobody is seriously suggesting that Brooklyn isn’t a part of New York City, But Brooklyn by itself is larger than all save three cities in the country, and the name “Brooklyn” sells all across the city and across the country. You can’t seriously suggest that “Anaheim” does the same. After all, no Eurotrash poseur ever named their kid “Anaheim”. (If you wanna play East Coast/West Coast rivalry, come on. Let’s get nuts.) Similarly, nobody seriously thinks that northern New Jersey isn’t a part of the New York metroplex. There’s very little of New Jersey that isn’t a satellite city, of either NYC or Philadelphia. But even so, New Jersey has eight million people from which to draw. Eight million people to fill with local pride. Anaheim has what, four hundred thousand? The Bay Area is a unique situation, with three cities in close orbit. But Anaheim is no Oakland in its relationship to its neighbor. Either of them. Nobody’s arguing that using the name of a smaller entity can’t work for a baseball team. Only that it doesn’t always work for a baseball team, and it was dragging down the Angels. There needs to be a significant amount of cultural cache behind the name, that just isn’t there in this particular case. Which is not a bad thing. Not every city can be Los Angeles. Not every city should be Los Angeles. (Really, not every city should be Los Angeles.) The state needs Fresnos and Bakersfields and Davises and San Berdoos too. They’re all wonderful, they all bring something. If the Angels move to El Segundo or Torrence or Pasadena or Monrovia or Thousand Oaks, they should still be the Los Angeles Angels. FWIW, and just to get back to the original topic, I hope the Angels don’t move out of Anaheim. I like them in Anaheim, it fits their relationship to the Dodgers. Can’t think of a better place for them anywhere in the whole Southland.
  16. Gothamite
    Alhambra and Beverly Hills, then.
  17. Gothamite
    Why Anaheim? Because Anaheim paid them to use “Anaheim”. And I guess now it seems a little silly for one of five teams in the state to try and claim the name. When they first adopted it, they were the only AL team in California. That meant something in those days. Now there are two additional teams in the state, the Angels aren’t the only AL club anymore, and even if they were the league distinction itself is meaningless.
  18. Gothamite
    Sure it is. A smaller city orbiting a larger one. When the central city is as large as LA or New York, the satellite cities get larger too. Doesn’t change the fact that Anaheim is well within the LA metroplex. If it wasn’t so close to LA, Anaheim would be Bakersfield.
  19. Gothamite
    I don’t know much about hockey, I’ll admit it. Except that I do know hockey is somewhat less dependent upon ticket sales than baseball is; baseball still draws a significant percentage of its revenue from attendance, which may be easier when you’re talking about a couple extra millions of fans over twice as many games. And yeah, I get that a lot of Anaheimers still don’t like to think of themselves as extended Angelinos.
  20. Gothamite
    You’re providing me more ammunition that Anaheim is a suburb, there. And as OC (mercifully) browns, it’s also becoming less conservative. I would say it might also be becoming less distinct, since so much of its self-image was tied up in whiteness. In what way? That river is a pretty big gulf. Besides, the more diverse Orange County gets, the more it resembles the extension of Greater Los Angeles that it is. That narrow identify is crumbling. Because Anaheim on its own isn’t big enough. Advertisers and sponsors and broadcasters were willing to pay more for a “Los Angeles” team than an “Anaheim” team. There are some rare smaller municipalities that have enough cache to sell to outsiders: Brooklyn, Hollywood. But Anaheim was only selling to Anaheim, and that wasn’t enough.
  21. Gothamite
    I’m saying they’re part of the LA metroplex. Orange County may well have its own vibe, but so does Malibu. So does Brentwood. So does Santa Monica. So does does Van Nuys, gods help them. For many, many years, residents of the OC tried to pretend they were utterly separate, removed, and distinct from LA. When I lived there, that was fueled in no small part by their relative demographics. But even though that cause is largely a thing of the past, it doesn’t make their pretense any more true.
  22. Gothamite
    “Anaheim Angels” only ever appealed to the city officials and those very few Orange County residents who like to kid themselves that they’re not a satellite city of Los Angeles. They’re well off to be rid of it. If only they had the courage to actually use “Los Angeles” instead of trying to pander to those residents with “Angels baseball”.
  23. Gothamite
    Better, I think, that it doesn’t connect to the S at all.
  24. Gothamite
    Hmm. I think that’s more likely; licensing is usually done on a league-wide basis. They license the image of the entire league, any fictional teams are a deliberate choice.
  25. Gothamite
    Well, that’s happened before. Substituting our a fictional team in place of a real one. Of course, Malamud did that deliberately to fit the Arthurian take he was weaving. What was the other movie’s excuse?
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