Was it? In 1990, the first full year of the Dome they still got great crowds, but did average 3,000 empty seats a game. It's not alot, but it might suggest that there wasn't that many people going to the Dome because it was new and exciting, but because there was a decent team there, just not a World Series team.

In 1991 when the team finished the season in first and up seven games on Boston, is the year that the 3,000 empty seats that were averaged in 1990 (record 86-76 )were filled. Attendance was consistent with the team's play and as we saw, only increased in 1992 and 1993 when the Blue Jay won two World Series. By that time, the Dome was 4 years old--still relatively new--but those people were going to watch a winner.

From 1989 to 1993, the worst years of attendance at the Dome were atcually the first two.

I'm not denying that there weren't people there because of the 'fad' of the Dome. I'm saying that a) there weren't that many of them as you think, and b) just because the Dome wil be 17, doesn't mean we can't get crowds upwards of 50,000.

And to follow up on my original post, the Jays need everyone, bauxites alike to go to as many games as humanly possible. No more excuses! :P

A-men! If any of you reading are former fans who are coming back to the team, or someone who's former interest in baseballwas buried by ten years of third place (or worse), then welcome home. I am *overjoyed* to see you back.

Hey, there's *never* any shame in being a fan.

In 1989, the average crowd was about 41,000 but obviously because of the Exhibition Stadium games. In 1990, attendance was 47,996 and the capacity was approximately 51,000. That was a full year at the SkyDome.

Now we are slowly returning to that. The Jays have a situation no other team in baseball has. The Jays have an exclusive market for television of 30 million people, to go along with a home base for attendance of around 4 million, plus Buffalo. The potential for revenue is amazing. The tv market is the same as all of California, which is split among 5 teams. Should the Jays get back to the 83-93 situation of perpetual contention and regular playoff appearances Rogers could be looking at paying a heck of a lot into the revenue sharing pool.

Remember, the Jays were small market due to a few things that are no longer true.

• Canadian dollar dropping to 61 cents US
• TV rights being based on a long term contract (now fully owned by the owners of the Jays so all tv revenue shifts are factored in immediately)
• Declining attendance regardless of what was being done, largely due to break in faith caused by 1994
• Splitting part of market with another team which is now in Washington (minor factor, but was there)
• Ownership that did not know, or care about, baseball
• Hot young kid in town taking away sports dollars in the Raptors
• New stadium down the street taking away corporate dollars (now is just another stadium)

Nice to return to my teenage years, when the Jays could win at any time. Plus a good omen, I'm seeing lots of real blue jays outside my window as I type this.

Let's be honest here. The Montreal Expos only had above league average attendance 6 times in 35 years and never averaged more than 23,000 a game after 1983. Even in the short 1994 season when they were on pace to be the best team ever, they only averaged 22,000. And after the horror was over, they still drew around 18,000 until 1998. Not only did Montrealers not show up when they were winning, but the expected decrease in attendance wasn't even that drastic.

My explanation is that there were few casual fans and the gross majority of people in attendance were die-hards before and after 1994.

The thing that really hit attendance hard was losing Pedro, Walker, and several other future superstars. That put attendance from the high teens to the low teens and then the thousands.

To be fair, it took a while for Montrealers to notice their team in 1994, but they did start showing up toward the end of the season. Crowds above 30,000 were not uncommon. For their final series at home that year against St. Louis, the Expos averaged 34,374. For an earlier series against division rival Atlanta, they averaged 43,958.

Source: Retrosheet

They were "on pace" to win 105 games, so I hope you are meaning "the best Expos team ever" or something like that. Even the later 1998 Yankees, who won 114, weren't "the best team ever." If the '94 Expos had finished, say, 43-5 (to end up 117-45) AND ripped through the post-season undefeated, then you could make the "best ever" argument.

For a season that was never completed, it's unfair to give them any label or projection. But as a homer more than anything, and a team that was close to the heart, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Scientifically or not, whether it makes sense or doesn't I'm going to call them that anyway. Crucify me.

That's an interesting note StephenT. I wonder why attendance was lower. May it had to do with finishing renovations of wheelchair seating or something. Still though, the Jays were able to sustain excellent attendance up to 7 years after the place was built. It can come back to that.

And I'll take this opportunity to make a PSA for folks to reply to comments using the 'Reply to this comment' link. For example, VBF has some comments in this thread that directly refer to some other comment and I have no idea which one. Using the link — and setting your preferences to nested comments — makes this easier. Thank you and have an excellent 2006.

I'd disagree with this. The Jays actually making the playoffs was *huge*. We "finally" got the chance to show off our city to the Americans, and went overboard about it.

They run old CityTV news broadcasts at 2AM on a Toronto cable channel... a couple months ago (on, roughly, the 20th anniversary) they played the show from the night of the first game of the series. Much of the program was devoted to the series, with emphasis on the fact that the city was going to get attention from a US audience in a way it had never had, to that point. (Included was an embarassing "humour" piece put together introducing the city to any American visitors who may have been watching the show)

There's no little question question that, at the time, the Blue Jays were the talk of the town... (I still have the Star sports pages from those playoffs... Allison Gordon's column "from the stands"... the BJ Birdy comic strip... such memories. :)

I think there was an SI cover story as well around the time of the 1983 ASB - Jays and Expos were both in first place and Dave Stieb was getting the start in the game.

Whatever it was. One of those anonymous American networks.

ALCS - Toronto attendance=39155, 34029, 37557, 32084
       KC attendance=40224,41112,40046 (capacity was about 40k)

NLCS - all games over 50k

League attendance though was much lower than is expected today. There were 3 teams with under 1 million (SF, Cleveland, Pittsburgh), just one over 3 million (LA Dodgers). The Jays, at 2.47 million were #5 (31k per game).

In 2005 every team cracked 1 million. 1 team was over 4 million (NYY), another 5 were over 3 million. The Jays 1985 attendance would've ranked just 17th in 2005. Standards have climbed drastically for attendance since the 80's. Only one non-Montreal team has been below 1 million in the 2000's (Florida in 2002 with just 1k more over the season in attendance than the Expos who were below 1 million in every season from 1998 on except for 2003).

Of note: 20 years earlier (1965) 9 of 20 teams were below 1 million, the highest was the Dodgers at 2.55 and just Houston cracked 2 million as well (new park, the Astrodome).

Standards for attendance are constantly changing. The Jays now, to be where they were 20 years ago in attendance relative to the league need to get over 3 million, or around 37k per game which they only cracked 8 times last year. If they make the playoffs this year, or come darn close (in serious contention until the last few days) I could see 3 million in 2007. Then Rogers starts making real good money, or we see a $100 million payroll (taking it as a given the tv ratings go through the roof along with the attendance).

Ah, this is so fun to dream about instead of hoping scrap heap guys work out.

Ugh, I know. The first time I ever went to a game there, my dad and I had to leave early... couldn't last nine innings.

Ah, this is so fun to dream about instead of hoping scrap heap guys work out.

OK, Hinkse is definitely a scrapheap guy. And Downs. But so was Candy Maldonado. And Tony Castillo. Every team hopes scrap heap guys work out. It's just that if you're a contender, you have less than a handful. If you're not a contender, maybe your entire pitching staff is made up almost entirely of scrap heap guys or kids, such as the Rays, or the 2003 Jays.

Ahh, yes. The trenches.

*I actually prefer 532, but I dare not say it here!

The Jays have an exclusive market for television of 30 million people

This certainly would be nice except for the fact that most people out in Vancouver are watching Seattle, people up north (Yukon, NWT, Nunavut) probably aren't watching at all, there probably isn't a huge market out in the middle of the praries, and the maritimes are so far removed from everything except Jr. leagues that I would be surprised to consider anyone there a fan. You are also assuming that every single person in every region of the country is a fan, also very unlikely. This is before you realize that the Jays aren't on TV every game outside of Sportsnet Ontario. I'm all for the Jays and I hope that we avg. 30k this season in the dome, but to say that we have tha tmany fans across the country just isn't true.

Those guys weren't trenches. The 1992 World Series video CLEARLY establishes that Derek Bell and Ed Sprague were the official trenches!

Is anybody else pleased that the Jays off-season moves have had the added effect of making Miguel Tejada upset at the O's? Nothing against the fans or the city, but there is something inherintly unlikeable about the O's. I think its probably just the management and ownership.

There was nothing inherently unlikeable about the real Os. They were the gold-standard for how to run a team, but that was 30 years ago. The current crappy-Os are a joke. Yankee and Red Sox fans outnumber Os fans at Camden Yards.

I grew up an Os fan but the current management has done me in. Burnitz is the straw that broke my back! I've flirted with becoming a Jays fan for the last couple years ... but it hasn't taken. I'm not ready to get onboard with another team spending big bucks, so I'm going the other way.

Go Rays! Gomes, Kazmir, Young, Upton, Crawford, Bankston, Cantu, Orvella! Devil Rays in 2007! Or maybe 2008! Woohoo!

You are a right big condescending arse.

Yeah, I gotta admit a smile crossed my face when I read this: "I don't want to say anything bad that can hurt my teammates, but look at Toronto, they have strengthened themselves and we haven't done anything," said Tejada, who hit .305 last season with 26 homers and 98 RBIs.

There's a site called frappr where you can do exactly that. Not sure if anyone has setup a group for users of this site but that would be interesting.

Not sure how to reply to this, Cristian; but since I'm the one who usually nags people about their language, I suppose I'm the "grammar nazi". (What an ugly term, by the way: you either don't know much about nazis or are too ignorant to care about how you use language.)

That's some sloppy use of brackets there Willy.

I cringe when I see bad grammar as well. I don't waste my time reading posts containing basic grammatical errors but I try not to chide the poster either. Most of the time I'll ignore these posts and I notice many others do the same. The poster gets the subtle message without being pilloried. The subtle method works. I've been a fan of this site for over 3 years and I've seen it work.

Since I've just been indirectly called illiterate, since the quote in question was originally directed at me, I ask that in the future, you please email and notify me that I am illiterate. It is much more becoming than pronouncing it on a popular website.

You may also want to think about utilizing the HTML format. It makes it a lot easier for illiterates like me to make out what you're saying.

See, here's the thing: Nobody on the Roster is questioning any poster's passion for baseball. The point is that we're not interested in being 'just' a site for fervent baseball fans or fervent Jays fans. We're interested in being a site for intelligent discussion of baseball. This is another statement subject to misinterpretation: When we bring up the subject of writing well, we're not insinuating that those who don't write well are unintelligent, but rather that they are not making the effort to write well. I know several people personally who fit this to a T - intelligent people who rarely choose to put the effort in to writing well.

Summing up: When we ask you to elevate the quality of your posts at Batter's Box, it's simply that, there are no hidden motives or veiled insults. You may be the most intelligent and most passionate Blue Jay fan here, but we're not interested in hearing your voice if you can't be bothered to take the time to use proper grammar and spelling.

Notice that throughout this I've referred to what "we" want. I constantly get the impression that many posters think that Batter's Box is some sort of public service that magically fell from the sky. It's not. Nor is it a for-profit feature like what you'll find on MLB.com or ESPN.com, where quantity is all that the hosts care about. The Box is a site created and maintained by the Roster. It's our house, and we pretty much open the door to everybody who wants to come visit us. If you came to my house here in Kitchener, I'd ask you to take off your shoes at the door. When you come to our house here on the web, we ask you maintain a much higher level of literacy than is found in the forums of those for-profit sites. I really can't see what's unreasonable about that.

Thank you kindly.

Note that although the above started out as a a response to 90ft_turnleft's comment, it's by no means directed at him/her in particular.

Would anyone sign them as FA's for the amount left on their contracts (roughly 2 years, $11M each)? That's what the Jays are effectively hoping for, that someone will unburden them of the balance of those contracts and then give whatever the minimum is you're allowed to give to legally call it a trade (an assortment of bobbleheads?)

Should the Jays be so brazen as to expect anything shiny and prospect-like back, I have to believe they'd be expected to subsidize a good portion of the remaining contracts.

Unlike Batista and Hudson, Koskie and Hinske -- while of potential utility to a handful of teams -- are not valuable trading chits because of the money owed them. They represent contracts that Ricciardi would love to magically see go away.

Two points. First, it is Gibbons' job to teach Adams. The moment I hire you to be my grammar coach, please point out all my grammatical errors. Second, would Gibbons chew Adams out on the field or would he wait and do it in private?

If you can’t bother about how you say something, it’s almost certainly not something worth paying attention to.

You offer opinions with an air of certitude that’s breathtaking--as if you actually *know* that you’re right. Wow.

It's not condescension, it's honesty.

I'm the same way. The second I encounter bad grammar and spelling, I can't help but make the assumption that the writer is someone who is not worth paying attention to.

And I hold myself to the same standards. When I do post something that is unreadable or riddled with spelling errors, I don't expect many (any?) people to take me seriously.

And, our old friend Josh Phelps will be signing a minor league contract with the Tigers.

A person's ability to write properly is not a measure of their intelligence.

And that's the best thing I've seen written on the topic in this entire thread. I wholeheartedly agree: It should always be about what you say, never how you say it.