Derek Zumsteg has written an article on the problems of the Mariners fan base. This paragraph jumped out at me:
It will be interesting to see if it's the season-ticket holders or the occasional attendee who abandons the Mariners first if they fail again to reach the playoffs and the blame is laid at the feet of the team's management. In other markets with good teams, we've seen both sides of the fan base devastated. If you go from sold out every season, like the Indians, to drawing 20,000 or less, that's a massive desertion of fans of all stripes. I would suspect that it comes on all fronts, that season-ticket holders give up 81 tickets for smaller packages, and then only come to a few games, while casual fans cut back from five or 10 games a year and stop going at all. But what if the team is competitive--as the Mariners aim to be every year--provide a nice ballpark and a win half the time, while never being good enough to advance in the playoffs without great luck? Do the sometime fans keep coming out, while the season-ticket holders give up their seats in disgust?
There's tension between the fan base and the Mariners management right now. The M's want to profit, and they want to do it by fielding a "competitive team," one that will be in the pennant race a majority of years. The boards and sports talk shows are full of fans who want them to drop the major coin on the kind of players that will more than likely win the Series (or at least not wilt in August and September).
My question: Which is better, to be good but not great for a number of years and maybe get lucky every once in a while, or to be truly great for a year or two -- then proceed to become awful for years because you blew all your capital on great players?
In the former camp, you have the Mariners and the A's (though with a much smaller budget). They contend every year, but they never seem to break through to the World Series. They're both fun to watch, but it does leave you wanting after a while. In the latter camp you have the Blue Jays and the extreme example of the Marlins, teams that bought a lot of great of players who won World Series titles, but then lost them to fire sales and retirement, leaving teams that dwell in the lower divisions of the league. Yeah, that magical year was wonderful, but in the case of Toronto, it's been ten years since Joe Carter parked that Mitch Williams ball in the Skydome seats, and this is the first year they've been within a weekend series sweep of first since the strike season.
So, which is really better? Would you rather mortgage your future for a World Series title knowing that you may not get back to that height for years (or decades)? Or, would you rather be in the mix every year, good but not great, and maybe get lucky?
For those who aren't into sports, if you were gambling, would you rather have "the sure thing" on a modest payout knowing that your luck would be terrible for the next twenty years, or would you rather have a number of good chances to win a large number of bets, but no guarantee than any of your bets will pay off at all?
