"It's the idea of how you become compelling," said Bob Stellick, president of Toronto-based Stellick Marketing Communications. "With the Jays, it's not a question of ticket prices. Ticket prices are economical. It's just that this city is a spotlight city and the spotlight has moved off of baseball right now. It's really difficult to get it back."

A successive group of people hasn't been able to find the answer, he said.

Stellick touched on that also, how he was amazed that Toronto was a baseball town more than a hockey city during that height in popularity during the early 1990s, when he was working for the Maple Leafs. It wasn't just a winning team or the novelty of the SkyDome, he says, it was the ability of Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick, the Jays management team at the time, to endear themselves to the city through a humble, folksy, everyday-guy demeanour, while using sharp business acumen behind the scenes.

"Beeston used to tell me that was the whole secret," Stellick said.