MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[OnWis97]

It's really amazing to think that the Rays entered a long-term lease on that warehouse in 1998. Three years later, MLB was talking contraction for teams that could not get modern ballparks.  The Suncoast Dome was probably a year or two away from going down as a (even more) colossal waste of money.

[Digby]

30 minutes ago, Sport said:

The teams I always forget about are the Dbacks and up until recently when they landed deGrom, the Rangers. I'd have a tough time naming any players from those two teams. 

 

If I'm being honest, if I wasn't a Reds fan it would probably be the Reds for me. In fact, I remember listening to The Ringer MLB podcast when they did their season preview episode around this time five or six years ago and they did five to ten minutes on every team's outlook heading into that season. Except they straight up forgot to discuss the Reds. I felt like that was about right for where the franchise was and is again. 

Yeah, it’s the Reds for me (sorry). 

[TBGKon]

2 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

It's really amazing to think that the Rays entered a long-term lease on that warehouse in 1998. Three years later, MLB was talking contraction for teams that could not get modern ballparks.  The Suncoast Dome was probably a year or two away from going down as a (even more) colossal waste of money.

Blame the original owner Vince Naimoli.  He was even more a cheapskate than Stu Sternberg and was all for the $$$ and nothing else.  Sternberg is cheap, but at least he has guys in the FO who can run a baseball team on the cheap and be successful on field.

[B-Rich]

On 3/8/2023 at 3:03 PM, gosioux76 said:

To be fair, the Seventies weren't really worth remembering anyway. 

 

--(shameless nostalgia tangent )--

Lots about the seventies well worth remembering-- if you were there:

 

 

EDIT:  Added one more from the end of the 70s, as this IS a sports logo and uniform board, figured this one fits in:

And in doing so, 44 years after this picture was taken, this logo/uni nerd notices for the 1st time that HALF of the jerseys had BLUE collars, while the other half had WHITE collars. Talk about non-uniform uniforms,

 

Now, back to the conversation...

[McCall]

43 minutes ago, B-Rich said:

 

--(shameless nostalgia tangent )--

Lots about the seventies well worth remembering-- if you were there:

 

 

Now, back to the conversation...

[tBBP]

Oh this what we doing? Shoot...

 

 

 

 

 

(And all that was before I was born....greatest era of music ever.)

[infrared41]

On 3/8/2023 at 4:26 PM, Sport said:

Red Sox fans that live in Tampa aren't some magical breed of human better at driving to St Pete than Rays fans

 

Sure they are, just ask them.

[GDAWG]

3 hours ago, McCall said:

 

Except for Danny Masterson, the rest of the cast is back for That 90's Show on Netflix

 

Spoiler

Donna and Eric's daughter is dating Kelso and Jackie's son.  Fez owns a chain of hair salons and dates the mother of the best friend of Eric and Donna's daughter.  

 

[McCall]

8 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

 

Except for Danny Masterson, the rest of the cast is back for That 90's Show on Netflix

 

  Hide contents

Donna and Eric's daughter is dating Kelso and Jackie's son.  Fez owns a chain of hair salons and dates the mother of the best friend of Eric and Donna's daughter.  

 

Yeah I watched the whole season when if first came out. Nowhere near as good as the original, but nostalgia will have me watch the next season. I watch That 70s Show just about everyday.

[who do you think]

On 3/8/2023 at 3:09 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

70s and fedoras

 

"You can't delete us, we had the bash brothers once! We matter!" No. Nobody cares. Chop chop.

 

On 3/8/2023 at 4:26 PM, Sport said:

Red Sox fans that live in Tampa aren't some magical breed of human better at driving to St Pete than Rays fans, they're just asked to do it fewer times each baseball season. If they had to fill 81 dates they would have the same problem "coming out".  

 

I think we outnumber the actual Rays fans here. (as if that's a high bar to clear)

 

On 3/8/2023 at 4:53 PM, McCall said:

And every post of your makes me want to repeat that you don't speak for anybody but yourself. Literally no one else. And quite honestly, I don't think anybody would want you to speak for them, to avoid any implication of association, alone.

 

But you did hit the nail on the head when you referred to your posts as "regurgitation".

 

 Absolutely seething. Go play banjo on the porch for a while.

 

On 3/8/2023 at 11:13 PM, Dynasty said:

(I don't know what their popularity out west is, so you can dispute this if there is something I'm missing).

 

Ask the empty stadium.

 

Also how can your stadium have sewage problems when nobody's there to use your toilets? Are those feral cats potty-trained?

[SCMODS]

3 hours ago, who do you think said:

 

"You can't delete us, we had the bash brothers once! We matter!" No. Nobody cares. Chop chop.

 

 

I think we outnumber the actual Rays fans here. (as if that's a high bar to clear)

 

 

 Absolutely seething. Go play banjo on the porch for a while.

 

 

Ask the empty stadium.

 

Also how can your stadium have sewage problems when nobody's there to use your toilets? Are those feral cats potty-trained?

 

Should we just call you dbad for short?

[Walk-Off]

On 3/8/2023 at 2:46 PM, FiddySicks said:

The thing is, both the Rays and especially the A’s absolutely HAVE been given a fair opportunity to do just what you’re saying. I know a bit less about the Rays situation, but for the A’s, the issue has ALWAYS been the unreasonable desire for public funding. They’ve had several locations that would be suitable, but have always run into roadblocks when it comes to who’s actually going to pay for it (and for that matter, who is going to keep the profits). I don’t think anyone is being “unfair, unjust, and hypocritical” to the A’s, they’re simply always coming to the table with proposals that are borderline absurd from a funding standpoint. They always want the city/county/state to assume all of the risk while they reap all of the rewards and profits, and cities have told them no in that one, and for very good reason. That part of all of this has always been consistent, and even somewhat simple.

 

On this set of points, @FiddySicks, I have the impression that you and I are more or less in agreement.  As I had opined in this same thread almost a week earlier ...

 

On 3/2/2023 at 5:42 AM, Walk-Off said:

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.

 

On 3/2/2023 at 5:42 AM, Walk-Off said:

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.

 

To be clear, I aimed my uses of such phrases as "every reasonable opportunity possible" (with "reasonable" being italicized deliberately for emphasis) and "unfair, unjust, and hypocritical" squarely at that one commenter (and anyone who would agree with said commenter) who keeps arguing that "nobody cares" about either the A's or the Rays and, thus, both of those teams need and especially deserve to be killed off ASAP via contraction ... even though the Giants endured similar turmoil in their ballpark situation for multiple decades and remained free to -- and ultimately did -- extricate themselves from their morass.

 

Which brings me to the next part of my response ...

 

On 3/8/2023 at 2:46 PM, FiddySicks said:

Part of the purchase price for the Giants when they sold to the current ownership group included the territorial rights to the South Bay. Now you can argue if you want that it wasn’t the right of the old ownership group to sell those rights along with the club (legally, they were, though. As I said earlier, those rights fell to the Giants when the A’s never bothered to claim them back, which they could’ve done free of charge for many years), but either way, that’s what happened. Why should the Giants ownership group just give up those assets to their competition when they paid for those rights? Not only that, they HAVE offered the rights to the South Bay to the A’s, but expect them to pay a fair market price for them (just as you would expect of you were selling any piece of property/land), and the A’s have always balked at the price. I sort of understand the idea that they should be willing to help more because the A’s helped them, but you also have to realize just how much the demographics of the Bay Area have changed since the A’s gave those rights away. It would be like if you had some land that wasn’t of much value to you so you gave it as a gift to someone. Just because they decided to build a city center there 30 years later and the land value sky rocketed doesn’t mean you can come crawling back expecting to get that regifted to you because there’s more money in it now. That would be nice, but this is Major League Baseball we’re talking about here, not UNICEF. The A’s simply made a dumb as all deal, had the opportunity to correct it, never did, and are now whining that they’re not getting a mulligan. Nice try, but, come on now. What business sense would that make from the Giants standpoint? 

 

• How often has any independent media outlet without any inherently pro-Giants and/or anti-A's bias ever reported anything that contains substantive and objective evidence that the Giants have ever been willing to sell South Bay territorial rights to the A's, but the A's have been simply unwilling and/or unable to meet the Giants' asking price?  If it were just a matter of the A's paying enough money to the Giants, then why, in 2013, did the City of San José's government file a federal antitrust lawsuit (which died ultimately when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case in 2015) that sought to force MLB to let the A's build a permanent ballpark in San José?  Instead, all that I have encountered with regard to this issue over the years have been repeated accounts of the Giants organization and the owners thereof digging in and doubling down on their South Bay territorial rights and refusing to part with or even share such rights at any price.
• An analogy to building an astonishingly profitable city center on a tract of gifted land would make at least some sense if the Giants' current ballpark were inside the South Bay territory that the A's ceded some thirty years ago.  However, ever since the Giants moved for good into their present stadium within the franchise's original territorial footprint in the Bay Area, in a part of San Francisco that is even farther from the South Bay than was Candlestick Park or even the team's temporary first home in The City (Seals Stadium), I think that a more fitting comparison of the Giants' South Bay rights would be to a parcel of gifted land that has become a thicket of weeds and a popular destination for litter because the current owner has no need for it whatsoever, but whose owner still fights mightily to keep so as to spite and to one-up the gifting party.

[Sport]

8 hours ago, who do you think said:

 

I think we outnumber the actual Rays fans here. (as if that's a high bar to clear)

 

 

Even if that's true you're comparing fan support in a 9 game sample size versus Rays' fan support over an 81 game sample size. The fans of popular teams don't have "no problem" coming out, they just have far fewer games to choose from. If the Rays fans only had 9 games to choose from in a season it would also look like they have no problem coming out. You know that, though, because you removed that point from my post. 

[infrared41]

14 hours ago, infrared41 said:

On 3/8/2023 at 4:26 PM, Sport said:

Red Sox fans that live in Tampa aren't some magical breed of human better at driving to St Pete than Rays fans

 

Sure they are, just ask them.

 

As I was saying...

 

9 hours ago, who do you think said:

On 3/8/2023 at 4:26 PM, Sport said:

Red Sox fans that live in Tampa aren't some magical breed of human better at driving to St Pete than Rays fans

 

I think we outnumber the actual Rays fans here. (as if that's a high bar to clear

 

 

[MJWalker45]

On 3/7/2023 at 6:21 AM, BBTV said:

Good teams can become bad teams overnight (and vice versa.)  I wouldn't even factor in the on-field success of a team (unless it's one with the sustained track record of maybe the Yankees, Cardinals, etc) in a relocation or contraction discussion.

 

If you contract them, then the people who made the on-field product good would be able to get jobs elsewhere and make someone else's product good.  It kinda nets out.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 6:45 AM, McCall said:

Two words: Major League Baseball Players Association.

I wonder if, in the present day, are MLB and the A's ownership as worried about butts in seats as they are about TV and streaming revenue. Looking at USFL and XFL football, I think you're looking at television companies that are happy to pay for sports programming and not as worried about butts in seats anymore. Granted, it also means the A's and Rays aren't getting national game of the week coverage unless they play teams that non-Rays and A's fans come in to watch, so Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers. Moving into Vegas might get the Athletics more fans showing up on game day, but they'll also have to do a lot of night games unless they move into a dome. For the Rays, I'm surprised that a new stadium hasn't happened yet, but if the owners are overestimating what they can get without having to pay for, it makes perfect sense. 

[maz]

I'm with those who aren't sure a new ballpark would help attendance if a team is still irrelevant. The Pirates are irrelevant and play in a widely-lauded downtown ballpark. Nobody still comes to games. Hell, if PNC wasn't part of a package deal with Heinz back in the late 90's, they'd likely have gone to DC years before the Expos did. And after that first year when the "new ballpark" novelty wore off... right back to crappy attendance.

 

A good stadium doesn't necessarily draw crowds when your team is irrelevant, it just keeps the team around a while longer, whether people care or not.

[monkeypower]

9 minutes ago, maz said:

I'm with those who aren't sure a new ballpark would help attendance if a team is still irrelevant. The Pirates are irrelevant and play in a widely-lauded downtown ballpark. Nobody still comes to games. Hell, if PNC wasn't part of a package deal with Heinz back in the late 90's, they'd likely have gone to DC years before the Expos did. And after that first year when the "new ballpark" novelty wore off... right back to crappy attendance.

 

A good stadium doesn't necessarily draw crowds when your team is irrelevant, it just keeps the team around a while longer, whether people care or not.

 

Semi-related, I was in Pittsburgh in October for the Jets game and went to two Pirates games that same trip. PNC is so great. Everything that people say about it is correct.

 

It made me realize the Pirates situation sucks. They got a great set-up and a great brand and a great history and they should be good. I was looking around there and realized I could be a Pirates fan if the Angels weren't around, but the org stinks.

[GDAWG]

 

[Sec19Row53]

6 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

 

I wonder if, in the present day, are MLB and the A's ownership as worried about butts in seats as they are about TV and streaming revenue. Looking at USFL and XFL football, I think you're looking at television companies that are happy to pay for sports programming and not as worried about butts in seats anymore. Granted, it also means the A's and Rays aren't getting national game of the week coverage unless they play teams that non-Rays and A's fans come in to watch, so Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers. Moving into Vegas might get the Athletics more fans showing up on game day, but they'll also have to do a lot of night games unless they move into a dome. For the Rays, I'm surprised that a new stadium hasn't happened yet, but if the owners are overestimating what they can get without having to pay for, it makes perfect sense. 

You lose me at the point that you try to compare what an MLB, NFL, NBA, and possibly NHL team do compared to any other league or sport. I don't think the comparison is valid because the finances are totally different.

[VampyrRabbit]

3 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

I think the A's are leaving Oakland. The top brass have been sandbagging for two seasons and are probably going to have a second 100 loss season in a row, they just needed a site in Vegas and now it looks like they have found one.

Calling it now - The announcement for the move to Vegas will happen in either May or June.