Cubs’ Cachet and Rays’ Success Draw Fans to Tampa NYTimes.com

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — After the Chicago Cubs arrived at Tropicana Field on Tuesday for their first visit, relief pitcher Carlos Mármol found a big, empty reclining chair in the visitors’ clubhouse. So he sat down, leaned back — and tipped over.

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The Cubs’ Reed Johnson tried to bunt for a hit to drive in the tying run in the ninth Tuesday. He was thrown out to end the game.

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The Cubs’ Lou Piniella, right, who used to manage Tampa Bay, surprising Don Zimmer, a senior adviser for the Rays.

He looked a little like a turtle on its shell, his feet up in the air, his blushing face wearing a sheepish smile. Welcome to Tampa Bay, where even good teams can be upended. More than five hours later, the Rays pulled off a tense 3-2 victory in an interleague game that matched a team with a following like few others and a markedly improved team on the prowl for more fans.

The result, and Wednesday’s 5-4 loss to the Rays, left the Cubs’ record at 45-27, still the best in baseball. Along with their lofty status atop the National League Central, the Cubs also brought to this domed stadium the celebrity cachet of Manager Lou Piniella, a Tampa native who ran the Rays from 2003 through 2005.

And they brought a lot of fans. “I’ve left enough tickets,” Piniella said before the game. “So there should be a few cheers, anyway. We’re very fortunate in that we have a really good road following. Everywhere that we go, there are Cub fans.”

A crowd of 31,607 attended Tuesday’s game, and it ended with supporters of both teams on their feet trying to outshout each other. On the final play, with Chicago’s Kosuke Fukudome on third, Reed Johnson made a surprise bid for a bunt base hit that would have driven in the tying run.

As Fukudome raced home, third baseman Evan Longoria charged the ball, picked it up barehanded and threw low to Willy Aybar, the first baseman, who scooped it on the bounce and survived a collision with Johnson to clinch Tampa Bay’s victory.

“It was a little bit awesome,” Longoria said of the game’s boisterous atmosphere. “We had great energy.”

The Rays, baseball’s big surprise, are 42-29, second in the American League East, two games behind Boston.

Troy Percival, Tampa Bay’s closer, called the final out the best bunt play he had ever seen. Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay’s manager, said the atmosphere may have exceeded anything he had seen in his three seasons here.

“It was ‘The Pit’ tonight,” he said of Tropicana Field, meaning it as high praise.

The attendance was 4,441 short of capacity in a stadium that often feels empty. About half the fans cheered for the visitors and many wore blue Cubs hats and shirts, something acknowledged by Dave Wills, the Rays’ play-by-play announcer, to his radio audience.

“And I hope they get back on their jets and go back to the Windy City crying in their beer,” said Wills, who used to work in Chicago — on White Sox broadcasts. More big, Cubs-spiced crowds were expected Wednesday and Thursday.

But not all the Cubs fans traveled from Illinois. One of their locally based boosters was Linda Walker of Largo, Fla., who wore a pinstriped Cubs jersey and sat in the upper deck. She demonstrated her cellphone, which lights up with a Cubs logo.

Walker said she watches most Cubs games on a pay television package. She has attended or has plans to attend Cubs games in places like Houston, Atlanta and Miami.

“Last year, I took my vacation in Pittsburgh to see three Cubs games,” she said. She has never visited Wrigley Field. “That’s my dream,” she said. “To spend a week at Wrigley Field watching ballgames.”

Derrek Lee, the Cubs’ first baseman, said being in first place “doesn’t hurt” the team’s fan appeal, which stretches from one coast to the other, partly because WGN televises games nationally on cable and partly because the Cubs are, well, the Cubs, on their endless quest for a world championship, with the drought now standing at 100 years.

Alan Trammell, a Cubs coach, said the intensity of the Cubs’ following had grown this year, and that the flock was larger than usual when the Cubs recently played the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

“I was surprised,” Trammell said. “They were chanting, ‘Let’s go, Cubs,’ in Dodger Stadium.”

Coming into Monday’s game, the Cubs’ road attendance average, 34,278, was the sixth highest in baseball, and it will probably rise if current trends continue.

None of this can hurt the team’s market value. Everything about the club is for sale, even the name of the Cubs’ park, Wrigley Field. Crane Kenney, the chairman of the team, said that selling the field’s naming rights was “certainly something we’re looking at.”

Kenney is bullish about the value of the franchise. “A billion dollars would be a floor, really,” he said, adding that baseball’s marketing success should “push this value north.”

Kenney often travels with the team, and he is here for the series. When the Cubs visited Cooperstown, N.Y., to play in the final Hall of Fame game against San Diego on Monday, Kenney said fans lined up six deep on the sidewalks to see the team’s caravan passing through town. (The game was canceled because of rain.)

“All the folks from the Hall of Fame said they don’t have that reaction when other teams are playing there, except for the Yankees,” he said.

A stroll through the stands at Tropicana Field on Tuesday revealed mostly good relations among the two teams’ fans. There was a lot of banter, most of it good-natured.

Eddie Madden, an usher working the aisle of Sections 300 and 301, said the atmosphere was quite different when the Yankees or Red Sox come to town and their many supporters show up.

Madden grew up in Brooklyn as a Yankees fan and is a retired telephone installer.

“I never realized how obnoxious we are,” Madden said of the behavior of Yankees fans. “And the Red Sox fans are 10 times worse.”

On Tuesday, Madden’s section was filled with dozens of Rays regulars who rang cowbells and celebrated opposing strikeouts as Cubs trudged back to the dugout.

“Left-right-left-right — sit down!” they chanted at the Cubs who struck out.

And Madden carried a stack of baseball cards, which he handed out, one by one, to children. He described Tuesday’s audience as “a fun full house.”

“Both sides are nice,” he said.