MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[BBTV]

2 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

 

In fairness, it's really about time we begin debating the scourge that is lava-dildo bridges. Let's end this national nightmare. 

We’d need to be careful about treading into political territory once it’s time to vote for funding lava-dildo bridges.  Wouldn’t want to get modded. 

[gosioux76]

1 minute ago, BBTV said:

We’d need to be careful about treading into political territory once it’s time to vote for funding lava-dildo bridges.  Wouldn’t want to get modded. 

 

Good point, especially since the left wants more dildos and the right is pushing for more lava. 

[Digby]

As long as the bridges aren’t falling into any of the bays in question.

[Brian in Boston]

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

 

Good point, especially since the left wants more dildos and the right is pushing for more lava. 

Be wary of politicians promising to put the proverbial, “lava flow in every pot. And a dildo in every backyard, to boot.”

[gosioux76]

1 hour ago, Brian in Boston said:

Be wary of politicians promising to put the proverbial, “lava flow in every pot. And a dildo in every backyard, to boot.”

"As your governor, I plan to make sure no taxpayer has to foot the bill for another dildo bridge ever again! I can't be bought by the dildo lobby!"

[McCall]

2 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

"As your governor, I plan to make sure no taxpayer has to foot the bill for another dildo bridge ever again! I can't be bought by the dildo lobby!"

Dildo? Dildon't.

[The_Admiral]

5 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

I can't be bought by the dildo lobby!"

Herb Kohl used to run on this, though I'm sure the lobby made a very good-faith effort.

[Red Comet]

Listen. Lava may be bad and hot now, but it’ll make great soil down the line. Ergo, if we want more farmland to grow more food, we should increase the supply of lava across the lands of this country. 
 

And if you want to make America Great, we need food security first and foremost!

[BBTV]

If they can be used to make bridges, is there any reason why the actual stadium couldn't be made of lava and dildos?  Acquiring and safely transporting lava might be extremally costly - I'm not sure, it's been years since I've tried.  But the dildo part should be reasonably cost-effective, and they come in enough shapes, sizes, and colors to be used in a variety of structural applications.  Thinking outside the box here, but could LavaDildo Park be the new home of the Rays in 2028?

[McCall]

7 minutes ago, BBTV said:

If they can be used to make bridges, is there any reason why the actual stadium couldn't be made of lava and dildos?  Acquiring and safely transporting lava might be extremally costly - I'm not sure, it's been years since I've tried.  But the dildo part should be reasonably cost-effective, and they come in enough shapes, sizes, and colors to be used in a variety of structural applications.  Thinking outside the box here, but could LavaDildo Park be the new home of the Rays in 2028?

Can we go green and use lava and eggplants?

[BBTV]

7 minutes ago, McCall said:

Can we go green and use lava and eggplants?

 

I'm not sure if that would work from an engineering perspective.  You can easily have 35,000 screaming fans sitting on and jumping up and down on dildos.   I'm not sure if eggplant can support the weight, plus it might rot.  Also I'm not sure exactly what role the lava plays.  

 

We need an engineer to explain the science of all this to us.  I think there's one complaining about the Coyotes over in the NHL Antithread.  I'll see if I can find him.

[McCall]

11 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

I'm not sure if that would work from an engineering perspective.  You can easily have 35,000 screaming fans sitting on and jumping up and down on dildos.   I'm not sure if eggplant can support the weight, plus it might rot.  Also I'm not sure exactly what role the lava plays.  

 

We need an engineer to explain the science of all this to us.  I think there's one complaining about the Coyotes over in the NHL Antithread.  I'll see if I can find him.

Are we building a parking lot, too?

[VampyrRabbit]

8 minutes ago, McCall said:

Are we building a parking lot, too?

If we are using dildos, it's going to be a long, hard road.

[BBTV]

10 minutes ago, McCall said:

Are we building a parking lot, too?

 

We tried that once, but it ended with the 'Yotes skating on the frozen blood of the non believers.

[gosioux76]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

If they can be used to make bridges, is there any reason why the actual stadium couldn't be made of lava and dildos?  Acquiring and safely transporting lava might be extremally costly - I'm not sure, it's been years since I've tried.  But the dildo part should be reasonably cost-effective, and they come in enough shapes, sizes, and colors to be used in a variety of structural applications.  Thinking outside the box here, but could LavaDildo Park be the new home of the Rays in 2028?

I think one of those World Cup venues in Qatar was made out of dildos, but they took it down so fast we may never know.

[Dilbert]

So the Rays new stadium will be built out of lava and the A's new stadium will be in the shape of a dildo.

[who do you think]

I :censored:ed a girl from Missouri last night. She had a C-section scar on her butt cheek.

 

On 2/28/2023 at 9:46 AM, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I've spent some time in Tampa/St. Pete and all I remember is you have to drive for everything. Quick grocery store run? Nope -- 25 minutes, at least. Run to the pharmacy? 25 minutes. Go to dinner? Half an hour. See baseball? An hour.

 

Sitting in your car for long stretches of time is part of the culture in that part of the world. I don't understand why it's okay to take 45 minutes to get to a titty bar but not a baseball game.

 

Unrelated question: would a baseball stadium next to Raymond James fare better?

 

The area around RayJay is a dump, unless you like titty bars, car dealerships, and Hooters. It's fine for NFL/Sundays, but you don't want an every day team there.

 

On 2/28/2023 at 11:58 AM, McCall said:

 

Actually it started with his opinion that the Rays should be contracted due to the stadium and my rebuttal that they're a good on-field team, so relocation would make more sense, wherever it may be. The "way he was going about it" went so far into the realm of ridiculousness that the general discussion between relocation outside or inside of Tampa Bay/contraction got muddied to hell.

 

Noooooo we can't lose a team that's really good at winning 88 games a year with no money!

 

Merge them with the Pirates or something, then. Put that scouting and front office brainpower somewhere it will be appreciated, instead of whatever pet motel's been running things in Pittsburgh for the last three decades. The Pirates have their single-A team and run spring training out of Bradenton anyway, which is just a bridge drive aw- oh never mind.

 

On 2/28/2023 at 1:36 PM, tp49 said:

No one seems to remember either that Candlestick was difficult to access outside of the 101 and an express bus from downtown.  They had attendance issues as well.  Giants attendance didn't surge until Pac Bell was built in a more accessible location.

 

Decent point, but Pac Bell itself is a scenic tourist attraction that can't exist anywhere around here, unless you have a weather machine to make the weather not miserable during the PM hours in July, August, and September.

[Walk-Off]

First, with this thread's new title, I think that it would be a smart idea to merge the Tampa Bay Rays: Escape from the Trop thread (whose last post, IIRC, was during the lockout-affected 2021-22 MLB offseason) into this thread, if that has not been done already.

 

Second, am I the only one who thinks that the biggest (if not only) reason why neither the Oakland Athletics nor the Tampa Bay Rays have been contracted out of existence might be actually the same reason why neither team has garnered a new ballpark in its respective current territory, moved to another market, or been sold by its respective present ownership?  Please bear with me on this:

• Chances are that John Fisher et al. have been asking for too much from any and all governments across Oakland's part of the San Francisco Bay Area with regard to bringing forth a new ballpark for the A's and, likewise, Stuart Sternberg et al. have been asking for too much from any and all governments throughout the Tampa Bay region when it comes to securing a new home venue for the Rays.
• Chances are that another reason why the A's remain at the Coliseum and the Rays keep playing at the Trop is because their respective ownership groups have been asking for too much from politicians and/or businesspeople in other markets when either team's ownership has explored a relocation seriously and/or powerful figures in a given metro area have tried strongly to sway an existing MLB franchise to move to their region.  For the A's, possible evidence of such a situation can be found in the seemingly frequent changes that Fisher and his lieutenants have been making to the team's apparent "Plan B" of a move to the Las Vegas area.  For the Rays, the likely evidence is that the team's only serious relocation threat in recent memory was that controversial (and, IMO, utterly foolish) proposal to split home games between the Tampa Bay and Montréal areas each season, and Sternberg and his partners ended up abandoning that idea relatively quietly during the negotiations for the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players' Association.
• While lots of MLB fans have spent years wishing that the A's and/or Rays would gain new ownership, chances are that both teams' current principal owners have been asking for too much money from any and all serious would-be buyers of either franchise.
• Finally, chances are that both the A's and the Rays still exist because their respective ownerships have been asking for too much money from all of the other MLB clubs and/or from the MLB commissioner's office to shut down those teams, surrender their franchises, and let all of their players with extant contracts (including minor-league players) be taken by MLB's surviving clubs in a dispersal draft.  As I see it, had the A's and/or the Rays been owned by people willing to let the team(s) succumb to contraction on terms that were and are undoubtedly financially reasonable to the rest of "the Lodge" of MLB, the negotiations for the now-current CBA with the MLBPA would have included -- and the MLBPA may have even accepted -- language that would have allowed a reduction of MLB teams and MiLB affiliates thereof in exchange for the rosters of the remaining MLB clubs and their farm teams expanding enough to take in all of the players that the contraction had displaced.

 

Whether or not any of us likes it, I suspect that the only way that John Fisher, Stuart Sternberg, and their respective co-investors will ever be humble enough to steer themselves and their teams away from their existing states of affairs is if they all lose so much money that they absolutely must make earnest compromises on stadium deals (whether in their teams' existing territories or elsewhere) due to a clear and basic lack of leverage and/or find themselves under genuine financial pressures either to sell their franchises for sane prices or to take monetarily rational buyout offers from the rest of the MLB "Lodge" to cause the A's and the Rays to become things of the past.  Thus, anyone and everyone wanting to upend the status quo for both the A's and the Rays has the burden of needing to boycott Fisher, Sternberg, and their respective co-owners whenever and however possible.

[waltere]

4 hours ago, who do you think said:

I :censored:ed a girl from Missouri last night. She had a C-section scar on her butt cheek.

 

 

I didn't think it would be possible for a thread to go downhill from an extended discussion about the structural integrity of dildos, but it did!

[McCall]

5 hours ago, who do you think said:

I :censored:ed a girl from Missouri last night. She had a C-section scar on her butt cheek.

Your mom's from Missouri?