Yay, Reyes looked good in a workout today. Whew. Â It has been so long since good news that I don’t know what to do. Â Yes, I have been quite pessimistic about Jose, and I am glad to be proven wrong.
A friend and I were talking about this whole Rays to NJ thing that Peter Gammons started.
Depending on where it is, Rays Stadium might be easier to get to from Mets Police HQ than Citi Field is, the Rays might make for a fun team to passively follow. Â I’d still get SNY in my house and could still buy my zero season tickets for Citi, just like 2010 and always love my Mets. Â Every 50 years the Rays will play the Mets in the World Series and I’d root for the Mets, but a random Saturday afternoon with an hour less driving? Â Could be tempting.
I wonder if the market is viable, or if they would just be the Devils of baseball. Â Probably both.
If I’m the commissioner of baseball, I’m stacking the schedule every year to make the Rays play the Mets and Phillies  in interleague every year.  Sorry if that makes the schedule unfair, but it would be too cool to pass up.
The NJ Rays would play the Yankees and Red Sox the standard 9 times a year as AL East opponents…you could be looking at 24 sellouts out of the gate if MLB adopted my stacked-interleague plan (the Sox sell out Philly easily, and there’s even a lottery to get Sox at Phils tickets this year.)
The briantrust had some other suggestions:
“Swamp Rays”
“Devil Rays” (Steal the hockey team’s NJ logo)
“Original Rays” complete with a pizza box logo. (I think that’s been done).
Would you go to an NJ Rays game more than that first time to see the stadium, and the three games where the Mets visit?
I’ve counted myself as a Mets fan for two-thirds of my life. I don’t see why I would switch teams if the Rays moved to Jersey.
Besides, I hate the thought of driving to major sporting events because of the parking lot traffic afterward. New York City has functional mass transit for their major sports venues. NJ mass transit — what there is of it — was mainly intended to help people get out of the state.
So I’d figure it would just be once to see the stadium, and maybe the interleague Mets games.
i completely respect that. Do you live in the city proper? There’s something to be said for not crossing the river, and that works both ways.
However, to your point, it’s actually easier for me to get to Phillies games and I never do that.
After reading the Gammons article, I got to thinking about how all the northeast cities had two (or three in NY’s case) teams back before expansion. How awesome that must have been. Baseball fans would probably be thrilled to still have the Braves in Boston and the A’s in Philly.
Living in Pennsylvania and 10 minutes outside Trenton, NJ, a move by the Rays to Jersey would definitely be interesting, but nothing more. I’ll always be a Mets fan and only a Mets fan, but there would be another stadium close by to check out during the long summer. Plus for me, it would probably be easier to get to than Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, and Citizens Bank Park. The place would easily sell out during any NY(both teams) or Philly matchup too.
However, I feel that the northern CT/Hartford/western Mass. region would probably be able to handle another team easier than stuffing one in between NY and Philadelphia. The only issue there is it’s another AL team, so you have direct competition with the Red Sox fanbase.
In answer to your question, I’d go to the three Mets games to root for the blue and orange and maybe one against the Phillies or Yankees to root for the “New Jersey Shores”
I’m loyal to NJ (and what does “Devils of baseball”? The Devils have been the best hockey team in the tri-state — if not the northeast — since ’95) and would support the Rays fully, except when they played the Mets. I would become one of those fans who has an NL team and an AL team. But I couldn’t give up on my first love — no matter how many times it tries to sabotage the relationship and trick me into breaking up with it.