Earlier this week, WTA pro Ashley Harkleroad announced that she has posed for the August issue of Playboy magazine.

Most people responded by asking "Who is Ashley Harkleroad?"

Harkleroad, 23, is the 61st-ranked player on the women’s pro tour. She’s best known for showing up to the 2001 U.S. Open as a 16-year-old in a skimpy Nike outfit that showcased her curves. The comparisions to Anna Kournikova were immediate and neither Harkleroad, her Nike handlers, nor her parents seemed to object.

A few months after the 2001 Open, I spent a day with Harkleroad at the Saddlebrook Resort near Tampa for a feature for Tennis Life magazine, where my wife worked at the time as the art director. Harkleroad was pleasant and down-to-earth; she even asked my wife to come back to her condo and help select wardrobe for the photo shoot. But it was clear even then that Ashley would have a difficult time concentrating on tennis when everyone else was busy packaging her as the next Anna.

"I’d rather be known for my tennis, but I think it’s good that I get attention," Harkleroad said that afternoon. "It’s good that people know who I am. If it’s negative or positive attention, whatever. Having my name out there is a good thing. It’s good to have people know you on the tour."

Harkleroad was viewed at the time as a promising prospect, not a can’t-miss but certainly a raw talent. She hasn’t lived up to expectations, never advancing beyond the third round of a major and not winning a tournament of any sort. Along the way, she’s been married, divorced and now engaged again, and dealt with various injuries.

As far as tennis, she has yet to match the modest accomplishments of Kournikova, who never won a singles title but was ranked as high as No.8 in the world and captured numerous doubles championships with Martina Hingis.

Perhaps there’s something in the water at the Saddlebrook Resort. Hingis, who has owned a home there since 1999, retired earlier this year after testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon last year. (Hingis denied using the drug.) Jennifer Capriati, the poster child for squandered tennis talent, has owned a home at Saddlebrook since 2001. And now Harkleroad.

Harkleroad’s decision to pose for Playboy is part of a recent trend of female athletes stripping for a magazine that seems less relevant all the time. Back in the 1980s, fading actresses in their mid-to-late 30s used the magazine to stay in the spotlight. In recent years, volleyballer Gabrielle Reece and swimmer Amanda Beard have posed.

Perhaps Playboy will be a springboard for Harkleroad to get work trading on her looks and bubbly personality. Her tennis game apparently still needs a lot of work.

The Tampa Bay Rays, for the first time in their 11-year history, are on fire. They’ve won six straight games to take over first place in the American League East. The team’s pitching and defense have been among the best in the game. The Rays have defeated many of the AL’s best pitchers, including Roy Halladay, Josh Beckett, Chien-Ming Wang, and Ervin Santana. Last night, they won in extra innnings against Mariano Rivera.

The Rays have the most exciting young team in baseball and appear well equipped to make a run at the postseason. You might think Tampa Bay fans would be coming out in droves, especially with the top-draw Yankees in town. You might think that, but you would be wrong.

Last night, the Rays drew just 16,558 fans to Tropicana Field and continue to battle the Kansas City Royals for the worst attendance in the league. On Thursday, the Rays will unveil a plan to finance their proposed waterfront stadium, on the site of the historic Al Lang Field spring training site.

The timing couldn’t be better…or worse. Throughout their existence, the Rays have struggled to draw fans. The thinking was that if they could ever field a competitive team, they’d attract crowds. After all, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tampa Bay Lightning each spent a decade (longer in the case of the Bucs) as one of their league’s worst franchises. Once they turned things around, their tickets became difficult to acquire. The Bucs, who have floundered in recent years, recently raised ticket prices for next season 30 percent in most parts of the stadium. Nobody raised a protest. The Bolts are struggling, four years removed from a Stanley Cup championship, but still fill the former Ice Palace most nights.

The Rays, meanwhile, have among the lowest ticket prices in the game. Unfortunately, they play in a market unlike any in North America. The reasons for the lack of attendance are many, but here’s a top 5 list.

1. It’s the economy, stupid.

Over the last five years, the Tampa Bay area quietly has become one of the most expensive places in the nation to live. Part of it was the real estate boom, where Tampa Bay was ahead of most of the country. No longer is real estate considered a bargain, or even affordable, for most people relocating here. That’s because homeowners insurance has more than QUADRUPLED since four hurricanes struck Florida in 2004, even though they came nowhere close to Tampa Bay. So if you were paying $1,200 for insurance in 2004, you’re likely paying $5,000 or more annually now. Property taxes are roughly 2 percent, which cancel out much of the savings from living somewhere with no state income tax.

Not only that, Tampa Bay has the lowest per capita income of any Major League Baseball market. This is not an area where there are many six-figure corporate jobs. For years, this didn’t matter because the cost of living was so low. Companies drew employees with the promise of cheap housing, no state income taxes, and sunshine. These days, housing is expensive and any money saved on state income tax goes toward homeowners insurance and property taxes.

I walked the stands at The Trop over the last two nights and what was striking was the number of young adults in attendance. That’s a good thing for the Rays. Once a team is viewed as the in-thing to do, the 18-to-34 demographic will come out in droves. They tend to buy more beer. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find many families. Yes, school still is in session. But it’s also the economy. The NFL and NHL already have priced families out of the stadium, but can fill a house with guys and couples. Baseball, with 81 home dates, can’t do that.

Even with modest prices, many families likely still can’t afford more than an occasional night at the ballpark.

2. It’s the gas, gas, gas.

Tampa Bay is a provincial market. For some reason, people view a drive of more than 10 miles as a nuisance, even though traffic here is negligible. Anyone relocating here from Los Angeles, Atlanta, or the D.C. area (as I did), finds it fast and easy to get around. After all, we had grown accustomed to driving 45 minutes-plus to get anywhere, even if it was only 10 miles.

Here in Tampa Bay, many people hate driving between Tampa and St. Petersburg (home of the Rays) or between Clearwater and St. Pete or between Tampa and Clearwater. The communities, which make up one market, are separated by short bridges/causeways with minimal traffic. But you’d think people were being forced to navigate the Holland Tunnel at rush hour or the lengthy Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel between Virginia and Maryland.

With a winning ballclub, that modest drive to St. Pete might not look so bad. But now that gas is approaching $4 a gallon, the folks in Tampa and Clearwater likely will continue to stay away. Because of the higher cost of living and the low per capita income, higher gas prices affect people more here, even though they tend to drive less than in many parts of the country.

3. The Ghost of Vince Naimoli

It’s tough to think of a baseball owner that did more to alienate fans, businesses, and community leaders than Vince Naimoli, who was the team’s managing general partner until being bought out as front man in October of 2005.

Naimoli often made George Steinbrenner, his bitter crosstown rival, look like a laidback, easy-going fellow. This is a guy who once asked high school band members to purchase tickets before they could play before a game, a guy who once insisted the St. Pete-Clearwater Chamber of Commerce pay $750,000 to use a Rays photo on the cover of a tourist brochure promoting the area (and the then-Devil Rays), and a guy who routinely berated members of the media publicly in the press box. Stadium ushers seemed to adapt Naimoli’s temperment, often treating fans like trespassers.

In 2004, Naimoli sent angry letters to Hillsborough County officials demanding that they remove pesky raccoons from his massive estate, which includes a 25,000 square foot home. (Ironically, the Rays went on a long winning streak immediately after.) And in perhaps his most memorable moment, Naimioli went ballistic on a St. Pete patrol man who had the nerve to stop Naimoli’s wife for running a red light. Naimoli, who was driving behind his better half, pulled over behind the cop. Naimoli screamed, "Don’t you know who I am? I’m Vincent Joseph Naimoli, owner of the Devil Rays. That’s my wife!" The cops leaked the videotape to the media.

Naimoli’s successor, former Wall Street financier Stuart Sternberg, is a mild-mannered, gregarious guy. He and his staff have spent 30 months mending fences. But many fans still associate the rebranded Rays with Naimoli, who remains chairman of the team, with a 15 percent ownership stake, even though he’s now a silent partner.

4. All football, all the time

Ten years ago, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were national heroes. You still could argue whether football or baseball was more popular. Now, it’s not even close. The NFL has run laps around MLB. Ten years ago, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were just emerging from the wilderness of two decades of losing, moving in to a new stadium.

The Buccaneers generally have struggled since winning the Super Bowl following the 2002 season, but they still have a huge following. The same fans who gripe about $9 upper deck ticket prices to see the Rays think nothing of spending a minimum of $99 for lower bowl tickets to watch the Bucs. They don’t complain about personal seat licenses or being forced to pay full-price for two exhibition games each year — three last season, when Jon Gruden opted to rest his starters for the final home game once the NFC South was clinched.

The NFL dominates sports talk year-round in most communities, but especially in Tampa Bay, where they do occasionally take time out to discuss Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators.

Even with the Rays moving in to first place, sports radio today likely will be dominated by the news of quarterback Jeff Garcia threatening to hold out unless he receives a new contract.

5. The New Stadium Factor

When Tropicana Field opened, we still had the Seattle Kingdome, the Houston AstroDome, and the remnants of the cookie-cutter, multipurpose generation of fields in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Diego, and San Francisco. Since 1998, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati also have opened new ballparks.

Now "The Trop" looks especially outdated, even though it provides much-needed air-conditioned comfort. Because of global warming, it doesn’t rain here much anymore, but the 72-degree temperature is most appreciated. Indoor baseball is what it is, but Rays owners – both Naimoli and Sternberg – have done everything they could to make the place more inviting. Nobody can deny that it’s a pleasant place to watch a game.

Still, Sternberg wants a new facility, one with a retractable, sail-like roof covering that supposedly will keep the place shaded and relatively cool. He has a lot of political hurdles to overcome before breaking ground, let alone opening in 2012.

Over the last two decades, it’s been proven that new ballparks are, at best, short-term solutions. Coors Field, Camden Yards, and Turner Field were packed houses throughout the late ’90s. Now they struggle to fill half way. The Pirates, mired in a 15-year slump, have never drawn well in their lovely new digs.

The Rays no doubt will see a spike in attendance in 2012, especially if they build the type of sustainable low-budget team that the Twins and A’s have fielded for years.  Even then, they’ll likely still face the same challenges that have plagued the franchise since the beginning.

Last week, Jose Canseco lost his 7,300-square-foot home in Encino, California to foreclosure. The ex-slugger couldn’t have timed the market worse, paying $2.8 million at the peak of the real estate boom in 2005, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Real estate hasn’t been Jose’s strong suit. He used to live in a palatial estate in Weston, Florida, where his neighbors included Dan Marino. (In the movie "Any Given Sunday," Dennis Quaid’s character lived in Marino’s massive home.)  It’s a nice place, Weston. Gated, lavish, neatly manicured, near Fort Lauderdale. Sort of The Truman Show on steroids, especially at Jose’s former estate. The compound, incidentally, was the site of the now-infamous pool party that Roger Clemens either did or did not attend.

Anyway, according to a recent story by Pat Jordan, Jose unloaded the Weston home several years ago in exchange for $2 million in stock of a Mexican telephone company on the condition that he couldn’t sell the shares for two years. Canseco was told the stock would be worth $5 million by then. Instead, he was able to sell for a paltry $15,000.

It’s just the latest in a string of bad investments. During spring training, 2000, Jose held court with a bunch of sportswriters, including myself, when he was playing for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He mentioned that he was making a fortune in technology stocks and had even created "The Canseco Financial Group" to help others manage their money. He told us that if we weren’t experiencing at least a 100 percent annual return on our portfolios, we should fire our investment advisors. He even handed out business cards. The fact that Canseco was soliciting sportswriters was perhaps the best indication of his handle on finance.

Within a month, the tech bubble burst. Within 18 months, Jose’s baseball career was over.

“You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue," Canseco told The Associated Press last week. "Obviously, when you make all that money, people think, `OK, let’s assume it is $35 million.’ People have to understand that $35 million, you’re paying the government 41 percent. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you’re taking care of your whole family.”

Well, not exactly. For starters, Canseco made more than $45 million over the course of his career, according to Baseball-Reference.com. This does not include post-season bonuses, contract incentives, and endorsements. He also made the bulk of that money before 1997, nearly all of it before the turn of the century. With some conservative investment planning, Canseco could be worth at least $50 million today.

Canseco also told The AP that his two divorces cost him $7 million or $8 million. His prenuptial agreement with second wife Jessica (the one who posed in Playboy) called for her to receive only $100,000 and a BMW. Presumably Wife No.1 (Esther) got the rest or perhaps (hopefully) the bulk of it is going to the daughter he fathered with Jessica. Either way, it’s less than 20 percent of his career earnings.

Canseco is hardly the only one to have foolishly invested in the late ’90s technology boom. Much of his fortune also went to very fast cars, exotic pets, and other toys. It’s difficult to think of an athlete who has blown such a huge stash of cash without recreational drugs involved. We’re used to hearing financial cautionary tales from the likes of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry. But Canseco’s performance enhancing drugs presumably weren’t that expensive.

In recent weeks, Canseco has shrugged off these tales of financial woe, noting that he’s now a two-time author of best-selling books. "Best-seller" is a relative term in the publishing world. Last night, Canseco’s new book "Vindicated" ranked 6,059 on Amazon.com after six weeks on the market. That means it’s probably only selling a few hundred copies a week through all distribution channels. His first book, "Juiced," was a legitimate best-seller, but it’s unlikely he’ll make more than $1.5 million between the two books.

Perhaps Canseco will be inspired to take better care of this $1.5 million than he did the first $45 million.