The town: Our baseball soul is missing

There was a time when you could define the quality of a baseball town by the public support shown during a period of mediocrity. That's a standard that cannot be applied in this era when the residents of metropolitan America suffer from brain chaos.

The population has moved to the suburbs, where the focus of the household is the kids' schedule and not a local sports franchise's -- particularly one that is playing six games a week for 26 weeks.

These folks can find the time to follow the NFL franchise over a 16-game schedule, win or lose, but in most any city, it's up to the baseball team to create excitement before the suburban consumers get intrigued enough to take the family to several ballgames.

A large interest in the Twins is a constant in rural Minnesota and with superseniors everywhere, but those suburbanites with the high-limit credit cards are too focused on the offspring and have too many entertainment options to go to ballgames if the ballclub is not trendy at that moment.

For sure, you will need a fire hose to keep the suburbanites away from Twins games in the summer of 2010, when the new ballpark is open, receives tremendous reviews and ranks briefly as the hottest destination in Minneapolis.

Guess what? Those nightly sellouts will not qualify the Twin Cities as a great baseball area, but simply will be more evidence that the dads and moms in Maple Grove, Lakeville and Woodbury aren't going to let their kids miss out on something the neighbors have experienced.

This doesn't make us unique in the American League Central. The same situation exists in the suburbs of Detroit, Cleveland and Kansas City.

The White Sox are in a more complex situation, where all it took to temporarily take the baseball attention away from the oh-so-cute Cubs was to present Chicago in 2005 with its first World Series championship in 88 years.

Three seasons later, the Sox are again very much second-class citizens when it comes to Chicago baseball. As for the rest of the Central:

• Is Kansas City a bad baseball town because attendance has lagged since 1995, or does there remain a solid base of baseball fans who simply have been beaten into submission by having one winning season (2003) in the past 13 -- and by averaging 101 losses over the past four years?

• Detroit is expected to sell out the entire home schedule this season. Should we gush over the renewed baseball fanaticism in Michigan, or remember the Tigers -- with a 43-119 record -- drew only 1,368,245 in 2003, their fourth season in Comerica Park?

• Is Cleveland a great baseball town because the Indians had a streak of 455 consecutive home sellouts in the 1990s in the new Jacobs Field?

Cleveland won five consecutive Central titles from 1995 through 1999, then missed the playoffs in 2000 and the sellout streak ended.

When the first losing seasons in a decade arrived, the Indians' attendance tumbled from 3.18 million in 2001 to 1.73 million in 2003.

The Indians fielded a 93-victory team in 2005, won the Central last season, and yet attendance crawled back to only 2.28 million.

A Cleveland reporter was asked to explain the dramatic difference in tickets sold for the 2007 excellence and during the sellout streak.

"The Indians hadn't won anything since 1954, so there was a fan base frustrated by 40 years of losing," he said. "There was the excitement of opening a new ballpark in 1994, and there was the Browns leaving for Baltimore.

"The Indians are now good again, but the Browns are back and as popular as ever, the economy stinks, and the Indians haven't had a 40-year drought."

Where does the Twin Cities area rate in comparison to the Central rivals? The opinion here is that baseball soul is stronger in Detroit, Cleveland and even Kansas City than is ours.

Example A: Twins win World Series in 1991 and sell 2,482,428 tickets the next season. Three years later, they are inept and official attendance is 1,057,667 for 72 home games.

No matter a players' strike or the level of ineptitude, a strong baseball area can't fall 1.4 million in attendance in three years.

Virtually all baseball locales are bandwagon towns. The tradition we've established here is to jump on slower and get off quicker than in most areas.

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com