As usual King gets it wrong again...I was at the Trop in August for a series where they played the Angels...the two best teams in the AL at the time and I figured the place would be mobbed...My first clue was my ability to buy seats 15 rows behind home the night before the game. My second clue was a largely empty parking lot. My third clue wasn't a clue, it was the sight of roughtly 25,000 empty seats during a game in which the Rays wouldn't quit and beat the Angels. EVERYONE in baseball knew this was the story of the season except the Rays' "fans"...there were a few diehards in the bar celebrating the team's success and we had great fun talking about their long wait (as a Sox fan I know something about that). The Tampa Bay fan "base" is about 10,000 die hards who had season tickets going into this year...the rest of the blowhards and bell ringers you now see prancing about, cheering for themselves, are distant relatives to the Yankees' front-running set who'll fill a putrid Stadium living out its last days and leave before the sixth inning to get a head start on the subway, or the talent-deprived Hollywood "stars" who now demand front row visibility at Chavez Ravine (and Staples Center)but haven't yet developed a reply to "Beat L.A.!.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a die-hard Sox fan but think the best team won the AL, if not by an injured ace and one false managerial move in game 2.

I totally adore Carlos Pena's clutch play (watched him at Wareham in the Cape League and followed his wayward journey through four franchises. How many Rays fans have his Northeastern college baseball card? I do.) and am intrigued by the manager and his patchwork bullpen.

But don't try selling any myth of Rays "fans"...there really aren't that many true fans down there.

I wish the team and franchise well...they've worked very hard these last few years and they're actively trying to expand the fan "base" (even if it means signing a 20 year spring training deal in a county with the oldest average population in the USA. Most of those fans are in bed by 9:30!) They put on a helluva party for the ALCS and were extremely friendly to Red Sox Nation (unlike the sour pussed dolts at the Stadium who frisk you and make you feel like Bin Ladden before charging you $8.50 for 3 day old beer) I'm happy for the Rays and their management and their very small crew of die-hards. The rest of their phoney fan "base" will head to the beach or wherever next year as we watch average attendance surge to maybe 20,000 a game.

It should be a good series. The real baseball fans up in Philly may well be disappointed again.

Your observation about the need for higher user fees is right on target. We cannot expect improvements if the users, the ultimate beneficiaries, don't help pay for them. But while this could solve the plight of larger airports where passenger counts are high, it does little for smaller regional general aviation centers whose numbers don't nearly support the facility. These airports largely rely on local tax revenues and state airport grant programs to cobble together the funds for needed runway, security, safety and terminal upgrades. Many cannot possibly support bond issuances. There's basically too few dollars chasing the long list of improvements needed at each of these important mini-hubs. Gen-air airports are important to local economies and provide supplementary access (in some places like the northeast access is quite seasonal) to the Nation's air transport system. We need to rethink the financing of these smaller airports as well. In the end, user fees are the most equitable and most easy to implement answer: perhaps a general aviation set-aside from the larger airports' fees can be structured? We need more thinking to focus on these smaller facilities.

I'm looking for links to pictures which illustrate your provocative points...too bad there aren't any! Your essays are much more informative when we can link to this or that illustration...Patrick please bring a digital camera when you're wandering around these sullen places...

Anyone who makes fun of one's Parkinson's tremors has lost the right to cry "foul". Limbaugh deserves all the vitiol he gets...he and his wing-nut friends can dish it but can't take it. I'd love to hear him invite Wanda to join him on the air...but he won't because he's a typical bully.

All the wing-nut extremist Catholics seem to be converging on South Bend at once...where were they to protest the death penalty loving, presumptive war-mongering, lack-of-compassion Methodist Cowboy President who courted evangelical anti-Catholics one day, and ecclesiastic tunnel visionaries like Alan Keyes and his ilk the next? Obama is going to trump their agenda today big time and further isolate them from the majority of Catholics who grapple with their ethical dilemmas in all the available shades of gray.

You betcha!

"Limbow" aka Limbaugh is also certifiably drug addled...his expansive girth reminds one of the scandal in major league baseball...the juice has gotton to the brain...

The Brooks Brothers domestic terrorists profess their allegiance to Ronald Reagan's principles, but they don't want to pay Ronald Reagan's tax rate, which is exactly what the President proposes. So much for their whining!