Tough Crowd: Rays Reporter Didn’t Like Criticism Of Team’s Attendance

The Tampa Bay Rays drew a whopping 39,902 fans to Tropicana Field for their American League Wild Card series against the Texas Rangers.

If you’re thinking that nearly 40,000 fans isn’t a bad crowd, let us remind you that the listed attendance combines both Game 1 and Game 2, with Tuesday marking the worst non-pandemic audience for a postseason game in the last 100 years of Major League Baseball.

The dreadful attendance numbers were noticeable by the lack of energy shown at The Trop. In the middle of Texas’ trouncing in Game 2, ESPN play-by-play announcer Sean McDonough took a nice little jab at Rays fans.

“And some boos starting to come down from the group,” McDonough said, per video shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I’m not sure we can call it a crowd. The group here at the Trop.”

It was an easy shot to take, but influenced a strong reaction from those who (sadly) spend considerable time in St. Petersburg, Florida.

“This is so distasteful to a fanbase that has shown up all year to support this team,” Rays reporter Ryan Bass posted to X on Thursday. “They attracted 312,000 more fans to Tropicana Field this year than in 2022, and had one of the largest attendance increases in MLB year over year. I love our fans. They deserve respect.”

Bass is absolutely right in saying the Rays’ attendance increased in 2023, but it still sat at just 1,440,301 across the season. That’s the fourth-worst mark in all of baseball. It isn’t necessarily even Rays fans’ fault, as Tropicana Field has long been the subject of criticism for its awful setup.

The good news? The Rays have a plan in place to build a new $1.3 billion stadium for people to not visit.