It really wasn’t a game-changer. More like a game acknowledger.
That was the well-hyped, threat-free statement of reality delivered by Tampa Bay Rays’ owner Stu Sternberg earlier this week at Tropicana Field. And, no, St. Petersburg Mayor Bill “The Rays are St. Pete’s Team” Foster was not by his side, although the two had chatted immediately beforehand.
Sternberg simply gave voice to the manifestly obvious. The Rays are a “regional asset,” he underscored, and they need a regional solution to their chronic attendance–and consequent revenue-stream–woes. He spoke of “rising above municipal boundaries.” And lest there be any status-quo wiggle room inferred by any local city councils: “Baseball will not work long-term in downtown St. Pete.”
With regionalism very much in mind, Sternberg uttered the “T” word after giving a shout-out to the work by the ABC Coalition. That’s the business-oriented group, which was formed by former St. Pete Mayor Rick Baker, that has recommended non-downtown St. Pete stadium sites to replace the obsolete, cat-walk house that is the Trop. Two of those sites are in Tampa: downtown and Westshore.
The Rays, as is well documented, have addressed all of the addressable Trop variables. Lowering ticket prices, offering free parking, allowing fans to bring their own food. They even spiffed up the Big Souffle and managed the miracle of a small-market World Series run. Attendance still lagged. They can’t limit themselves to playing weekends and being a warm-up act to KC and the Sunshine Gang. Rays’ attendance this season, despite the head-turning fast start, remains in the bottom third of MLB.
Winning, noted Sternberg, was supposed to be the real game-changer. But it was “clearly not the case.”
Now he’s on the record for what it will take for openers: A true regional discussion. One in which the “entire Tampa Bay community needs to be brought into the conversation.” One where “all possible locations” are considered. And just in case anyone in St. Petersburg or Pinellas County didn’t catch his drift: “We will consider any site in Tampa Bay, but only as part of a process that considers every ballpark site in Tampa Bay.”
Sternberg took the high road. Here’s what he could have said, and there have probably been times when he likely muttered as much:
“Look, you figure it out. You are the Tampa Bay region, and we are the Tampa Bay Rays. We want to stay here and make this thing work. You say you want no less. Prove it.
“We frankly don’t care about civic egos and endemic parochialism. The cost of breaking that (2027) lease at the Trop is the cost of doing business. It’s been done before. We can work that out with Portland or Las Vegas or San Antonio or Charlotte if it comes to that.
“This, as everyone well knows, is a weird, hybrid, asymmetrical, life-style market with too few corporate headquarters, too many folks with allegiances to other places and too many things to do in the summer besides watch baseball. Given all those givens, we can’t afford to remain on the western fringe of the market needlessly challenged geographically and demographically. That’s a variable we can definitely control. And we definitely want out. Otherwise we have an absolutely untenable business model.
“The optimal location, as the ABC Coalition pointed out, is not downtown St. Pete but somewhere near the hub of this Tampa Bay market. And, yes, that sounds like Tampa to me.
“I can tell you this. The Rays will ultimately survive and thrive and win a World Series. I’d like to see it happen here. We’re ready to engage. Don’t tell me who I can’t contractually talk to. Anybody got a number for Frank Morsani?”