Finally someone in Pinellas government is speaking out sensibly on the Rays inevitable, if low-key, search for a Tropicana Field alternative. Pinellas County Administrator Bob LaSala risked sounding like a home-town heretic by acknowledging that the county might be of help in building a new Rays stadium — “probably not in downtown St. Petersburg.”
In a further blow to narrow-thinking parochialism, LaSala even intimated that he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of the county supporting a stadium in — drum roll, please — Hillsborough County. Make no mistake, the Pinellas County Commission is a major player with leverage. It controls the hotel tax that underwrites about half of the bonds on the Trop.