Are we a baseball town?

The upstart Tampa Bay Rays were about to take the field in the World Series. Tropicana Field was gorging with fans and media. A national TV audience looked on. Yet one big question continued to hang in the air.

Do the Rays have a future in the Tampa Bay area?

The answer, Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg recently said, may not be clear until next spring, or possibly September.

"To operate here, we have to have sponsors, and have season-ticket holders, and have TV revenue, to have any chance of this thing working," he told a visiting reporter.

Sternberg's remarks could simply be a push for a new stadium. But he has good reason to question whether the Tampa Bay area can support a baseball team in the long run.

Despite two relatively large population centers and a history of spring training, the Tampa Bay area remains one of the poorest, oldest and most fractured communities with a Major League Baseball team, according to a St. Petersburg Times analysis of the 25 U.S. baseball markets.

Read the full story here.

Comments

[Clear Direction]

Aaron,

The question you raise in this article is an interesting one.

The capacity of the Tampa Bay Metropolitain Area to support a major leauge Baseball franchise, is an imortant and legitimate topic for discussion.

The subjust has been raised several times in the recent past by baseball insiders. Stuart Sternberg, Bud Selig, Bob Depuy and now The St. Petersburg Times have all mentioned the possibility that this area may not ultimately be able to support a team.

My only objection to this discussion is it's timing. Shouldn't the Ray's owners have addressed these (and for that matter the questions about the Ballpark) questions as part of their due-dilligence process prior to purchasing the franchise? After all this owner is an investment banker who earned his considerable wealth by advising others on the advisability of making aquisitions.

Aparrently, according to the Times, for Mr. Sternberg and those mentioned above, these questions regarding this area's ability to sustain a successful MLB franchise, persist.

I submit that the Ray's Need to answer this question with absolute certainty and without quivication BEFORE they ask the ABC Coalition to look at possible site locations for any proposed Stadium. The Ray's CANNOT ask this community to commit to spending public resources on a new ballpark if the Ray's ownership has not fully commited to this Community!

I can think of few things more tragic than a beautiful new baseball specific ballpark in St. Pete and the Team THEN answering this question about the area's ability to support an MLB franchise!

We cannot afford to place THIS cart before THIS Horse!

[Doc]

Stop whining Stewie!!! Keep putting a winning product on the field. We deserve it after 10 years of a circus. We'll see if you can hold on to your veterans after YOU have to pay the money. My guess is that you and the other owners are too cheap and we'll be like the Pirates---a team that develops talent for the rest of MLB.

[Taylor]

Why did you not include Manatee and Sarasota counties???

[atrulyconcernedcitizen]

Clear Direction is exactly on point. It was scandalous that the Rays cooked up a scheme to transform our precious waterfront FOREVER while having these doubts about the area's abilty to sustain an MLB franchise!!! As Clear Direction pointed out Sternberg OBVIOUSLY performed due diligence before making this investment. They ARE MAKING MONEY AND LOTS OF IT!!! Of course they won't open the books to public scrutiny. Simply take the known public numbers...a total of a 60 million dollar subsidy from MLB..subtract 43 million in payroll from that amount and you begin with 17 million before you even open the gates. Now begin to add attendance, corporate suites..advertising...broadcasting rights...merchandise sales...and you have to be a true MORON not to realize HOW MUCH THESE WEALTHY NEW YORK INVESTORS ARE TAKING TO THE BANK. Can they make even more by blackmailing some community to build them a new stadium. History certainly would indicate that to be true. But it's a new day economically and so the old days of blackmail may not be so effective. If they can afford to pay athletes tens of millions of dollars..it's incredibly ignorant to say they NEED A NEW STADIUM. I understand maximizing ones investment and the the fact the the New York Carpetbagger could care less about St. Petersburg's waterfront or taxpayers...this is CLEARLY OBVIOUS TO ANYONE BUT A NUMBSKULL (THAT INCLUDES YOU MAYOR BAKER AND JEFF LYASH) when you consider the Rays attempted this extortion at the beginning of this year with a record of ten straight losing seasons and all the doubts that are now becoming public about THEIR DOUBTS THAT THIS IS EVEN A VIABLE BASEBALL MARKET!!! Why did they then put our community through such a divisive debate...because as Mayor Baker wrote in his oped piece...they CARE about our community? Mayor Baker you have zero credibility in this debate!!!!!!!!!

[Scaramouche]

Do the Rays have a future here?

We now are learning that we don’t really live in a “rigorous free-market economy.” In our new “bailout mode,” even bubble businesses that generated our consumer fantasies are “too important to be allowed to fail.” They’ve all got their hands out for a big piece of the country’s future growth and tax revenues, which they call “government funds” to hide their moral bankruptcy. CEOs of failed entities take their spa retreats and 7 and 8 figure pay and “performance bonuses” and run, without consequences.

MLB franchises sell a consumer product, the entertainment and home-team potential good feelings of the Great Game of Baseball. Team owners increase ticket and concessions prices even as discretionary income dries up. Taxpayers, most of whom can’t afford tickets, are reeling, and our “leaders” are prepping them to be indentured for generations to “support” (read “give”) a new stadium.

The franchise owners, smart fellas, took their profits and fled the CDO bubble-space they helped blow up before it popped. They yak about “free markets,” but they want their national-socialist subsidy from Pinellas County (not even “Tampa Bay”), where our local teachers may soon be treated as “guest workers,” with their very own low-income housing, kind of like like the migrant farm workers mid-state. They want us to believe a “home team,” which they threaten regularly to move, is like food, with “inelastic demand,” for which we have to pay the demanded price – including a billion in public tax funds. “Be loyal to us,” they .” bray, “(while we pick you clean).”

Want a stadium, Rays Boys? You have a real capitalist business model on the Left Coast, the San Fancisco Giants AT&T stadium, bought and paid for by the part of the capitalist structure that gets the profits from what fans and TV and MLB anti-trust-exempt cost-sharing and naming-rights and concession "partners" are willing to put down. C'mon, you Capitalist Tools, how's about you Do The Right Thing that your hypocritical statements of faith in "American Free Markets" says you should? Or is the "Free" part just The New Kleptocracy's definition of what the "profit" they earn is supposed to be?

An MLB franchise might bump the area's esprit de corps a bit, as long as it is a winner. But the billion bucks might, you know, be more usefully put to work fixing roads and sewers (not just the ones leading to a new Sports Coliseum) and sidewalks and parks and paying for stuff like fire protection and teacher pay -- things that pay back an actual dividend and help keep the community actually alive.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The language in your story tells it: The “great game of baseball” is simply another “product,” and the people of Pinellas County (and the Bay area, for ticket sales at least since fans in Hillsborough and Bradenton and Manatee and Sarasota wouldn’t be paying at all toward the Great Subsidy) are reduced to nothing but “a market” to be exploited, and eventually discarded when it’s exhausted or a “better offer” comes along.