The two personas of Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg

ST. PETERSBURG — The owner in him is a diplomat. Even after the chaos of this season, his voice remains all varieties of calm.

Stu Sternberg stands in front of the cameras, and he chooses his words carefully, as if everything he says is an effort to say nothing at all. He smiles slightly, and even as he sidesteps the questions, he is as congenial as ever.

If he is disappointed in his Rays team, he will not say so.

If he is disappointed in his season, he will not say so.

If he is disappointed in the attendance, he will not say so.

All in all, if Sternberg is frustrated by all he has seen, and by all he has not, he is doing a swell job of hiding it.

The fan inside of Sternberg? He's a little different. That guy tends to throw more things these days.

He is like you, Sternberg. He watches the games, and he feels the acid in his heart. The losses come too frequently for him, and his frustrations build. The season is less than the previous one was, and yeah, he says, that bothers him.

Maybe it helps to know this. Maybe it doesn't. But when he looks at the standings and sees the Rays are 12 games over .500, his first thought is: "It isn't enough."

He shares your pain, okay? Even in the second-best season in Rays history, Sternberg admits he was looking for a little more, too.

"I mean it from my heart and my head, I am a fan first," he said. "I didn't come to look at it as a cold-hearted business. I get lost in the games. I get lost in the series. I get lost in the road trips. The good thing about that is that I'm able to look through those eyes and know what people are feeling.

"I'm more disgusted this year. I think you feel a lot of things as a fan. You feel anxiety, and you feel anger, or you question something. But this time, I'm a bit more disgusted at times."

Just wondering, but does anyone around here want to shout "amen" at this point?

That said, when you hear how carefully he answers his questions, don't you wonder how deep his frustrations must run?

Remember, he has never been one to deal in veiled threats or raised voices. If Tuesday's crowd of 17,962 bothered him or if Wednesday's 19,148 bothered him slightly less, he's not likely to let on.

But ask yourself this: If you owned the team, if you had turned it around from a last-place-forever failure into a team on the outskirts of contention, wouldn't it bother you?

You bet it would. When you looked into the stands, wouldn't you wonder if your payroll was too low, or if it was too high? When you looked at the attendance figures, wouldn't you question if this franchise could survive without a new stadium? Or, for that matter, even with one? Don't you have to wonder what the crowds would have been if the Rays weren't playing a name-brand opponent, or if they weren't still in a playoff race?

Oh, Sternberg said he still believes in the Tampa Bay market. He says he hasn't had a day's regret from buying the team. He says he's waiting to see what the stadium committee has to say.

On the other hand, with this kind of attendance, how long before other cities begin to call? And how long before he listens?

Yes, it's a familiar subject, and yes, people would rather talk about home runs than empty seats. Still, it seems worth a warning. Whether Sternberg will say it or not, you have to believe the clock is ticking.

On the other hand, you can say that about this season, too.

His news conference was over now, and the game was a half-hour away. Sternberg stood by the Rays dugout. If he looked up, he had a clear vision of last year's championship banners.

"We had individuals who could have, should be doing better than they're doing," Sternberg said. "By the same token, we have individuals who are having great seasons. We didn't have five guys on the All-Star team by mistake. The talent is there. Every team has players having off years. We should be in better shape than we're in."

So why aren't they?

Sternberg thinks about the question for a moment, as if he has thought about it before. There are so many possible answers that none of them seem to explain it.

"The only thing is maybe we've lost a little bit of the immediacy," he said. ''Last year, we answered the bell after the All-Star Game. For better or worse, we had some injuries in August, and it forced the rest of the team to step up."

Throw that in with all of the strikeouts and all of runners left on base, the defense that has slipped and the comebacks that fell just short. Too many times, the Rays have lost games that they would have won a year ago.

"You can't count on magic," he said. "You can't say that our plan is for some guy to fly in and save us in the ninth. In some respects, we might have come to expect a little magic instead of just being touched by it.

"I'm as guilty as anyone. We look at this year in relationship to last year. You look at last year as a comet, and it really was."

All of that said, the Rays do have a pulse, however faint. After all the losing seasons, wouldn't you think the attendance would be a tad better?

"We do have games that matter in September," Sternberg said. "Out of the next 10 seasons, if we have five that have games that matter in September, we're doing a heck of a job. That's the reality."