Two telltale — and not unrelated — outtakes from the recent Rays-Yankees games at St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field and at Yankee Stadium in New York:
*None of the TB-NYY Trop games sold out. Moreover, none drew more than last weekend’s game with the Los Angeles Angels. The crowd for LA, an American League also-ran, was nearly 32,000. Need you ask? Indeed, the game featured a post-game concert. In this case, Adam Lambert of “American Idol” fame.
*Among the many notables attending the opening game of the New York series was Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig. He’s never been reluctant to comment on the Rays or their stadium situation in the past, and he stayed true to rhetorical form.
“It’s a great franchise, they have run it beautifully, but there is no question they need a new stadium,” he said. Again. “And I’ll talk to (principal owner) Stuart Sternberg about that in the future.”
Count on it — and count on hearing about it.