The team has sucked for years. It’s hardly any surprise fan interest is down. I don’t think it has much to do with the strike, since the real dropoff in attendance has been over the last three years. (Actually, attendance was 25,000 yesterday.)
It’s offtopic, but Blue Jays attendance started to dwindle in the mid-90s when the team was purchased by Interbrew, a Belgian brewery. The team has since gone to hell organizationally, not only running the on-field product poorly but doing a horrible job off the field as well; at one point in 1998 they were actually threatening to move back to Exhibition Stadium if their taxpayer-funded Skydome didn’t charge them less rent. They changed the uniforms and logo and at one point actually took down the championship banners because they didn’t want fans thinking about the great Jay teams of the past (I am not making any of this up) and even got rid of the old mascot, BJ Birdy, to sever ties with the years of glory. Last year they actually decided to have cheerleaders, dancing hos who came out between innings and danced on the dugout roofs; these young ladies were greeted with encouraging comments like “Down in front!” and “Get the hell out of the way!” so that experiment didn’t last long. Between 1995 and 2000 they barely marketed themselves. In other words, we have here a baseball team that was run by people who knew nothing about baseball or the team they owned and frankly didn’t care anyway.
They’ve essentially looked and sounded like a second-class organization for years and they have gotten the fan support they deserve. I don’t mind at all. Teams that get big support even when they lose usually never win anything. Ask a Cubs fan. Or, to get local, a Maple Leafs fan. The Maple Leafs get great attendance even when they stink. And they lose, and lose, and lose some more. Why try to win if you’re filled to capacity when you lose?
So you have a team that has looked like a bunch of classless jerks and hasn’t won a single thing in years and in recent weeks has been the worst team in major league baseball, which did nothing to improve itself in the offseason out of sheer stupidity - look at the Mike Sirotka fiasco - and which in the eys of every Jays fan is flailing hopelessly because the first level of management (e.g. Buck Martinez and Gord Ash) is comically incompetent. I would compare them to the New York Yankees of the late 80’s and early 90’s when they were just terrible, George Steinbrenner had pissed everyone off, and their attendance was way down.
No surprise to me they’re not drawing; it’s damned hard to support a crappy team led by jerks, and that sort of PR disaster can affect you for years.
Fortunately, the team was recently bought by local interests and over time things will improve. You will see a remarkable uptick in attendance once they WIN something. Even a wild card. And don’t tell me they can’t do it, because Seattle is 43-12 after losing A-Rod, Griffey, and The Big Unit. Someday, eventually, the Jays will win the World Series again. The Red Sox, of course, will not.
