The Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ 2006 home opener brought an unfamiliar guest to Tropicana Field: hope.
The game drew a lot of other unfamiliar guests as well: It was a sellout crowd of 40,199, only the fourth in the team’s history.
The turnout shows the interest the community has taken in the reclamation project of Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg, who took control in October and began working to repair frayed relationships with fans and sponsors. He also set about making Tropicana more welcoming, spending $10 million for improvements.
Reviews of the changes were positive, but credit the new owner with keeping his eye on the ball. The Devil Rays treated their fans to a loss, as they have so often since the club began play in 1998. While showing enthusiasm for improvements in the fan experience, Sternberg also acknowledged to a local newspaper that the product on the field is the most important factor.
Now that the organization has had its Opening Day in the sun (or as close as Tropicana’s roof will allow), it’s back to the grinding work of righting an organization and back to crowds of far less than 40,000: Announced attendance for home game No. 2 was 12,600. Still, the Rays and MLB can be happy with the early returns on this turnaround effort, and in a year when the NBA’s perennially putrid Clippers are prepping for the playoffs, who would say that big things aren’t possible?
