Why is Major League Baseball Failing in Florida?
NICK CHARLES, HOST: Remember the famous line in the movie "Field of Dreams," "If you build it, they will come"? In Florida, baseball fans came. But now, they're practically gone. On this edition of PAGE ONE, when Major League Baseball moved into the Tampa Bay and Miami periods, they appeared to be entering the promised land. But now, the two franchises are fighting to survive in communities that don't seem to care.</s>JOHN BOLES, MARLINS MANAGER: We all want this thing to work here. There are a lot of us who have invested a lot of our careers with the Florida Marlins. And we certainly are not interested in leaving and going to another city.</s>CHARLES: How could something seemingly so right go so wrong? Also, the Summer Olympics are almost here. But if you think it's now a level playing field, forget about it.</s>CHARLES YESALIS, EDITOR, "ANABOLIC STEROIDS IN SPORT": There is no way that any athlete could afford to give another athlete using EPO that much of an advantage. It's like Cold War. You can't afford to unilaterally disarm.</s>CHARLES: The battle against performing-enhancing drugs. Is the International Olympic Committee really trying hard enough to stop the cheating? Welcome to PAGE ONE. And our first topic, the dark future of Major League Baseball in both West and South Florida. At one time, it all seemed perfect. Two major markets in the Sunshine State, savvy baseball fans used to seeing the best players from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Hank Aaron come to Florida every spring training, millions of transplants from up north, plus a burgeoning Latin community that loves baseball above all other games. How could Major League Baseball possibly miss in Florida? Sonja Steptoe has the PAGE ONE story of how it has.</s>SONJA STEPTOE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're young. They're entertaining. And they're competitive. Yet members of the Florida Marlins ball club perform night after night to a mostly empty house.</s>PRESTON WILSON, MARLINS OUTFIELDER: It just seems like the people here are pretty much apathetic towards baseball.</s>RYAN DEMPSTER, MARLINS PITCHER: We don't really know what to do. We just keep trying to play hard. And hopefully, we can convince them that we're worth coming to watch.</s>STEPTOE: Since the expansion team debuted in 1993, it has played in the Miami Dolphins Pro Player Park. During baseball season, the daily threat of late afternoon and evening rain showers discourages heavy turnout at the open-air facility. Furthermore, even when the Marlins manage to fill most of Pro Player's 36,000 baseball seats, only a small portion of the parking, concession, and advertising proceeds and none of the suite and premium seat revenues go back to the team. As a result, over the past five years, revenues have lagged well below the Major League average. This year, the Marlins expect to draw less than 20,000 fans per game and to lose between $6 million and $7 million.</s>DAVE DOMBROWSKI, MARLINS GENERAL MANAGER: Eventually, we're going to need a new ball park in order to be in a position where we can compete revenue wise with the other markets in baseball.</s>STEPTOE (on camera): What if you don't get the stadium? It sounds like you're pinning all your hopes on that.</s>BOLES: Yes we are. No question about that. If we don't get the stadium, there's no chance of survival here.</s>STEPTOE (voice-over): Miami's large Cuban American community is both passionate about baseball and politically powerful. But after enduring tax hikes to pay for two other new sports facilities in recent years, most residents as well as politicians remain strongly opposed to the Marlins' plan for a publicly financed, retractable- roofed downtown ball park that could cost as much as $400 million.</s>JOHNNY WINTON, MIAMI CITY MANAGER: They're asking for public financing. And they're asking for the most important piece of waterfront land in probably all of south Florida. Well, those are tough issues to deal with. So get rid of one of them.</s>JOHN HENRY, MARLINS CHAIRMAN: The club itself can't afford to spend $400 million and at the same time go out and try to be competitive for players. It's just not possible.</s>STEPTOE: It wasn't always this way. The Marlins drew three million fans in their inaugural season before the 1994 players' strike alienated all Major League supporters. The team won back many fans with its World Series championship run in 1997. But then-owner Wayne Hizenga's (ph) dismantling of that team engendered bitterness. Frustrated in his attempt to win support for a ball park, new owner John Henry complained in June that the community has given up on the franchise and declared that baseball in south Florida was, quote, "dead in the water."</s>DOMBROWSKI: Anytime you're in the process of trying to get a ball park built, there are a lot of peaks and valleys. And John reacts emotionally to those valleys. But I think that he believes and we believe that we can still get something done.</s>HENRY: We've made, or I've made, some mistakes in the past with regard to trying to get a stadium built by thinking the community would look at the situation and say, "This situation is ridiculous. Of course you need a baseball park." But it's not quite that simple. And I'm not going to give up just because it's not simple.</s>STEPTOE: The viability of Major League Baseball isn't only an issue here in south Florida, it's a statewide concern. Both the Marlins and their cohorts by the bay in Tampa are struggling to fill empty seats. (on camera): But in the case of the Devils Rays, the reasons for the problems are slightly different. While the condition and location of the Tropicana Field Ball Park here in St. Petersburg aren't exactly ideal, developing a winning marketing strategy for the team is an even bigger challenge.</s>WADE BOGGS, DEVILS RAYS ASSISTANT TO GENERAL MANAGER: You can have all the cow milking contests and pie throwing contests and things like that. You save those for the minor league cities. But the product that sells in the big league atmosphere is the team itself.</s>STEPTOE (voice-over): Revenues for the Devils Rays fell between 1998 and 1999. And so did attendance. So touchy is the subject of the club's inability to attract fans that club owner Vince Nemoli (ph) wouldn't allow his marketing chief to be interviewed for this story. Though the men in the suits are mum, the men in the uniforms believe winning will turn the tide.</s>GREG VAUGHN, DEVILS RAYS OUTFIELDER: Everything comes from winning. You know, no one wants to go watch a loser. And we're trying to get rid of that name tag.</s>LARRY ROTHSCHLID, DEVILS RAYS MANAGER: We need to win. And I think ultimately that will bring out the fans. And then the question becomes when we win, will they stay?</s>STEPTOE: Big league baseball in the state that so eagerly embraces sprint training seemed like a grand slam idea a decade ago. But with both the Marlins and the Devils Rays thus far striking out in their efforts to generate interest and profits, it could be that baseball will never become a hit in the Sunshine State. In Florida, I'm Sonja Steptoe.</s>CHARLES: What do you think Major League Baseball should do about the struggling Florida franchises? Fold one or both teams, relocate them, help them build new stadiums, or do nothing? Log on to CNNSI.com and let your voice be heard. Joining us now to talk about a confounding situation is CNN SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's Mike Berardino of the "Ft. Lauderdale Sun- Sentinel." Mike, why the terrible apathy for two places many viewed as the promised land for baseball?</s>MIKE BERARDINO, WRITER, "FT. LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL": Well, it probably goes back in the Devils Rays' case to their trouble winning in these first few years. Fans in the bay area look out to Arizona, their expansion brethren, and see the Diamondbacks winning a division championship in year two and competing for a chance at the World Series in year three. The Devils Rays just with a domed stadium also, in their case not a retractable dome, kind of getting caught on the back edge of a trend. Everyone wants the retractable dome. In the Marlins' case, it's obvious they alienated their fan base after winning a World Series in year five. They made expansion history. Then they made the wrong kind of history. And they're still paying for it.</s>CHARLES: What's your response, Mike, to those who say there are just too many options in Florida beside baseball, ways to spend your buck and ways to spend your time?</s>BERARDINO: I don't really buy that, Nick. I've heard Ted Turner say the same thing about Atlanta in the past to describe why the Braves don't always draw when they were just a so-so team or even a terrible team, and why the Hawks and the Falcons haven't drawn in the past. And there is stuff to do everywhere. Yes, the beaches are open year-round here in Florida on both the east and the west coast. But as far as Florida having savvy baseball fans, something that was mentioned earlier in the piece, I would dispute that. And I think that if you look at -- when you go on the road with the Marlins and you see a market like St. Louis where they applaud vigorously for moving a runner over from second to third, you just don't get that kind of thing here in south Florida at least.</s>CHARLES: Why wouldn't you get it there? You look at Arizona. How are they steeped any deeper history in terms of baseball than Florida? And I would argue that they are certainly with the fourth most populous state in the union, there are plenty of savvy baseball fans there.</s>BERARDINO: Well, if they are, they're staying home. And they're flipping around with the clicker at night. And that's possible too. One of their complaints here, obviously, is the fact that it can rain any time in the summer months. June, July, and August, you can expect one, a shower at least every afternoon. And often that leads to rain delays. The Marlins had 16 rain delays last year, three rainouts. And those figures continue on about the same pace this year. Why don't the fans come out? That's the great mystery. Why doesn't the Latin community in south Florida come out? That's another great mystery because the Marlins did go out and bring in people like Alex Fernandez and Edgar Enterilla (ph). And now Alex Gonzalez and Louis Castillo really hasn't shown up at the gate. Not at all.</s>CHARLES: With poor attendance a fact of life, why don't the owners of the Devils Rays and Marlins just run up the white flag, cut their losses, and find greener pastures?</s>MIKE LOWELL, MARLINS THIRD BASEMAN: I don't think it's as easy to move a team as people might think. There's a lot of factors that come in. And I'm not too sure that Mr. Henry has given up on south Florida, or Major League Baseball has either.