It’s now official, not just a trial balloon of common sense.
Given a green light by the county attorney’s office, the Hillsborough County Commission recently voted to formally invite Tampa Bay Rays’ management to come on by and chat a spell about the team’s future. Nothing overly specific, mind you, because St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster’s legal mouthpiece, John Wolfe, keeps talking tortious interference smack. That’s the lawsuit lever meant to intimidate would-be Rays’ suitors, even at the expense of the Tampa Bay region losing a major regional asset.
Fortunately most everyone outside St. Pete City Hall officialdom speaks enlightened self interest–as well as wink-and-nod nuance. And the Rays, to be sure, were in welcoming mode.
“We greatly appreciate the Hillsborough County Commission’s action and look forward to the progress which this regional discussion can bring,” responded Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg in an appropriate mix of enthusiasm and circumspection. The Rays, along with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, are already on record for noting that the obsolete, poorly-located Tropicana Field is not a viable Rays’ home for the duration of the team’s Trop lease (2027). Not even close.
So regional Rays’ talk is an encouraging start–one that even prompted the Pinellas County Commission to do likewise–even as the past continues to impinge. St. Pete built a domed, revenue-stream-challenged, now woefully inadequate facility on spec that opened in 1990. The city unsuccessfully wooed the Chicago White Sox, the Seattle Mariners, the San Francisco Giants and the Minnesota Twins before the expansion Devil Rays arrived in 1998. The resultant, long-term lease was the quid pro quo for letting the Rays keep the bulk of revenues from a public building. There were no attendance clauses for the Rays to invoke just in case.
Well, “just in case” happened. In year two. The reasons are manifold and have been well chronicled in this column. The most critical ones: a much maligned, catwalked facility on the western fringe of an asymmetrical market with no mass transit and a dearth of corporate headquarters.
The key variable is stadium/location.
Domes are now retractable, and Tampa–whether St. Pete or Seffner agree or not–is the hub of a market, that for all of its skewed geography, is among the 20 largest in the country. For Tampa not to be in the Rays-scenario conversation should be unthinkable. Because if it’s not, the most thinkable Rays’ scenarios are relocation out of the market or contraction out of existence. Definitely not among them: staying at the Trop through the lease. Sternberg has said as much. So does any reading of bottom-line tea leaves. Buying out the remainder of the lease–and the price decreases by the year–would be the cost of doing business for a would-be buyer/relocator.
It’s understandable that St. Pete officials would want to hold on to the Rays. Of course they would. The city has spent money on upkeep and debt service. And there’s personal pride and civic ego in having major league baseball housed on their side of Tampa Bay. But this has now turned into yet another variation on an all-too-familiar theme of regional parochialism that we can’t quite outgrow.
But at some point, the voices of common sense and enlightened regional interest have to be dominant–not just heard from. The track record of the St. Pete-based Trop is that of a well-documented underperformer. If a World Series didn’t change that reality, nothing will. Tampa must be the key variable; it can’t be Mayor Foster’s narrow mindedness
Sooner rather than later, the Rays will leave St. Pete and The Trop. That’s a given. The question is whether they move across the bay or relocate outside the Tampa Bay region. They will eventually do one or the other–and “eventually” keeps creeping closer.
The Rays need to be engaged–tortious-interference trash talk notwithstanding–not lamented as they head for Charlotte or Las Vegas or San Antonio or even New York. The Hillsborough County Commission has just taken a critically important–and long overdue–step. Plans call for a post-season, public conversation with the Rays, followed by a gathering of various regional leaders to brainstorm ideas and (private-sector) strategies.
The goal is not to keep the Rays in St. Pete. The goal is not to placate the Rays at all cost. The goal is to do what’s best for the Tampa Bay region.
And that means working together to retain a key regional asset.