Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays Should Be Embarrassed By Their Embarrassment

This Longoria isn't the one married to a French basketball player while starring in a soap opera on television. That is Eva, not Evan, the third baseman of the Tampa Bay Rays. One may be thrown off by the recent hissy fit the baseball Longoria had, and may be calling to cast this Longoria in Desperate Housewives Of Florida. 

After the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Rays in front of a sparse crowd of just over 12,000 paid attendance, Longoria cried to the media, hoping his tears would be wiped off by the paper they wrote on.

“We’re playing really good baseball, and it’s kind of like, ‘What else do we have to do to draw fans into this place?'” he said. “It’s actually embarrassing for us.”

"It’s a tough situation,” Longoria continued. “We want to go out there and win every game. We come into a game like today where we have an opportunity to clinch a post-season berth, and there’s only eight teams that get an opportunity to do that. We feel like we should be out there and have a packed house. And it’s tough to see and it’s actually sometimes disheartening for us."

His tirade of tears continued, “We’re going to go out there and play the same, and we’ve pretty much been doing that from Day One here,” he said. “…but you would like to think that for a team in a playoff hunt, with the opportunity to clinch, that you could at least get 30,000 in here to cheer you on.
   
“Again, it’s disheartening and it’s something I’ve been wanting to say for a long time. It’s not a jab at the fans. It’s not a kick below the belt. But it’s something that we’d like to see, because obviously we want to bring a championship to Tampa Bay. And we’d like more than 12-to-15,000 to know about it.

“Like I said, we’ve been playing great baseball all year, and since I’ve been here in ’06, the fans have wanted a good baseball team,” he said. “They’ve wanted to watch a contender. And for us to play good baseball for three years now, and to be in a spot to clinch again and go to the playoffs, I think we’re all confused as to why there’s only 15-to-20,000 in the building.
   
"We figured if we had a chance at the beginning of September, maybe the fans would come. Now it’s the end of September and it’s almost October and we’re still kind of looking up in the seats and going, ‘Where is everybody?’
    
“Again, we’ve still got some more time. So hopefully it starts to fill up. And if no other time, at least the post-season. It’s just tough to see and I feel like I was the right guy to be able to say that.”

His teammate, pitcher David Price, jumped on the Longoria bandwagon via Twitter. He tweeted, “Had a chance to clinch a post-season spot tonight with about 10,000 fans in the stands…embarrassing.”

What the real embarrassment is is spoiled brats in ivory towers who have no clue as to what is going on in their immediate communities.  First of all, the Rays play in Saint Petersburg, a city known for retired people.

In case Longoria and Price have failed to notice, seniors have not gotten a cost-of-living raise in their SSI checks in over three years. It is hard to afford tickets when you need to decide between food, rent, and medicine first. 

Perhaps Longoria wants the elderly to live a stereotypical life of eating cat food so they can scrounge together enough pennies to buy a $17 ticket way out in right field while buying a juicy $10 hot dog that costs the team less than a penny to prepare. 

The State of Florida also is in hard financial times, holding an unemployment rate much higher than the national average. At last check, the Rays are not giving away free tickets or accepting food stamps and I.O.U.'s to pay for them.  

If Evan Longoria decides to be the "right guy" again, perhaps he should start talking about things he has a clue about. Like hitting a fastball for example.

Complaining to the poor that they are not feeding the rich enough just once again shows the gap between sports and reality.