Take Me Outdoors

Baseball is an outdoor game. Something happens to baseball when it goes indoors. Maybe it’s the sound; the noise indoors sounds canned.

We’ve been to all the indoor baseball parks now, hitting Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., April 7, 2010 for the Tampa Bay Rays’ second home game of the season. Tropicana’s not a bad stadium, certainly not like where the Montreal Expos or Minnesota Twins used to play. Tropicana also isn’t the best indoor park, but the two on top of my list – Miller Field in Milwaukee and Chase Field in Phoenix – both have retractable roofs. Tropicana is the last indoor baseball park without a retractable roof.

The only excuse to have an indoor baseball field is to protect the players and the fans from weather. But I’m not convinced indoor baseball draws more fans. The night we saw the Rays beat Baltimore 4-3 there were only 15,220 fans. That was about one-third of the crowd on opening night. And the Rays started the 2010 season as one of the hottest teams in baseball, even sweeping the Red Sox in Boston. In 2009, Tampa Bay was 23rd out of 30 teams in attendance, drawing an average of 23,147.

I don’t think Tampa’s fans are staying away because the team isn’t any good. I’m blaming the stadium. The location in St. Petersburg could be part of the problem because it’s away from the population base in Tampa. But I think ballgames indoors also leave something to be desired. Weather is part of baseball, whether it’s the wind coming in from centerfield or rain that interrupts the 4th inning. There are even times games are postponed.

There’s a Tampa Bay civic group that wants to build a new stadium for the Rays, who are locked by contract with St. Petersburg into using Tropicana until 2027. The civic group wants a stadium closer to Tampa. I haven’t seen anything about having a new park with either a retractable roof or no roof at all.

Farther south, in Miami, the Florida Marlins have been playing in a football stadium (now called Sun Life Stadium) with a layout that’s much worse for baseball than Tropicana. But the Marlins park, even though it is falling apart, is still a better place to watch baseball than Tropicana. Part of the reason is that it is not covered (sure, we haven’t been to a Marlins home game in August). We saw the Marlins game April 10, also their second home game of the season, and they drew 25,308, albeit against the Dodgers.

Tropicana Field almost feels deserted it is so quiet, despite 15,000 fans. The biggest noise comes from the incessant clanging of blue cowbells which I guess are supposed to be a rally signal. They made me feel like I’d gotten lost in a Swiss cow barn.

The best thing about Tropicana is the Rays Touch Tank, a large fish tank in centerfield where kids and adults line up before and during the game for a chance to “pet” and feed a flock (herd?) of Cownose Rays. The rays, gray and about two feet across, swim circles around the tank, bumping into hands stuck in the water. The rays feel smooth, but like hard rubber.

I’ve been keeping score at all the ballparks. At all the previous parks we’ve been to, a scorecard costs $1 or $2. Not so at Tropicana. The scorecard is included in a free issue of the Rays’ magazine, “Inside Pitch.”