Arizona Diamondbacks: The Team is Winning, Where Are the Fans

Much, much, much has been made about the Diamondbacks diminutive attendance lately.  From team broadcasts, to local sports talk, to even the local morning news, whose anchors I suspect could not name four players on the team, everybody is criticizing the Arizona sports fans for not packing Chase Field on a nightly basis.

During the four game series against the Astros the Diamondbacks averaged about 18,000.  Looking at a comparable series last year, August 3^rd through August 5^th, a mid week, four game series against the Nationals, a subpar opponent, they averaged about 16,000.  Attendance is actually up from last year, although not as much as one would expect from a winning team.

But perhaps there are some explanations.

First, it was a mid week series, against the worst team in baseball, and one of the worst teams of the last decade, sandwiched in-between two home series against traditionally higher drawing teams, the Dodgers and Mets.  It’s not unreasonable to think that fans would prefer to see one of the other two teams, and the Diamondbacks front office obviously agrees with that since they are charging more for the Mets and Dodger games.

Secondly, the Phoenix economy is one of the hardest hit in the entire country.  The majority of homes are underwater.  Sure, you can technically go the Diamondbacks game for a very reasonable price.  You’ll be sitting in the nosebleed seats, eating a child size hot dog that you bought for $1.50, and drinking a 14 oz $4.00 beer that makes you feel like you are at a keg party, but you’ll at least be able to say you saw Henry Sosa pitch.

Is it out of the question to think that someone who has had to cut back financially would prefer to just watch the game at home?

Another possibility is that Phoenix is just not a baseball town.  People here just don’t like the game and have no appreciation for the sport.  This is, after all, what is said when the Coyotes struggle with attendance.

In relation to the Coyotes, perhaps a small, but completely unmentioned factor could be Ken Kendrick’s wife.  Randy Kendrick is on the board of directors for the Goldwater Institute, the organization that hamstrung the sale of the Coyotes earlier in the year with threats of a lawsuit.  While it is probably not a large reason that the Diamondbacks aren’t drawing well, there were many Coyote fans who decided that they would no longer be attending Diamondbacks games because of her perceived involvement in the lawsuit.

But perhaps the main reason is that Phoenix is a transient town, with few local, homegrown residents and the majority of the population maintains loyalties to the teams of the cities they used to live in, and to get them to come to Diamondbacks, Cardinals, or Coyotes games, the teams have to win, and win consistently.

Colin Cowherd spoke to this a few days ago.  He defended cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, warm weather cities that have a large transient population, and summed it up nicely.  There are plenty of baseball fans in Phoenix, they just aren’t Diamondbacks fans.  They are Yankee fans, or Cub fans, or Twin fans.

They show up when their team is in town.  Quite frankly whenever the Cubs play in Arizona there are probably more Cubs fans than Diamondbacks fans.  And when it is a team like the Red Sox or Yankees it is not even a question.

To get these people out to Chase field there needs to be a reason for them to come, a reason for them to be excited about the team.  It can either be a star player or an exciting product.

The Diamondbacks don’t have a star player.  While Justin Upton is certainly emerging as a star in MLB, especially this season, he is not a star yet.  And Ian Kennedy has been pitching great and has truly become an ace in the game, but he’s not Randy Johnson.  Those two are great players, but they are not stars. 

As for the product on the field, they have been one of the most fun teams to watch this season, defying expectations, and anyone who goes to the ballpark will not be disappointed.  But to draw the transient fans the team needs sustained success.

They are celebrating the ten year anniversary of the World Series win in a few weeks.  Since winning the World Series the Diamondbacks have been to the playoffs just twice.  That is not sustained success. 

In fact, in 2010 they were the third worst team in baseball and in 2009 they were tied for the sixth worst.  You can argue that is sustained failure.

And because of Josh Byrnes, AJ Hinch, and the organizational advocacy years, the Diamondbacks lost a lot of equity with the fans that they had built in 2007, and it’s just going to take a couple years of having a competitive team to build that back. 

Fans will come when they feel the team is a bona fide winner and competitor.  Fans that follow the team more closely will agree that a team with a one game lead in the division in the middle of August is a competitor.  But the casual fan needs more.

The Diamondbacks themselves, possibly outside of Kirk Gibson, did not even expect to win this season. Having the sixth lowest payroll in the league is not a typical trait of a competitive team, but rather of one that is rebuilding and looking to compete in the future.

It might be time to just chalk this season up to that.  It’s a rebuilding season, both on the field and in the stands, and hopefully the 2012 season sees continued success on the field and the fans gradually return to the ballpark.