MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[FiddySicks]

43 minutes ago, Dilbert said:

At a St Petersburg council meeting, the Rays gave a presentation on the new stadium development project. Apparently part of the agreement is the Rays play one game, wearing "St Petersburg Rays" jerseys (pending MLB approval).  To me this just screams the whole "Anaheim" schtick, that city forced the Angels to do, where the city didnt want to be little brother to Los Angeles so the team compromised with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim bs. St Pete doesnt want to play little brother to Tampa. I mean, theres a reason why its called Tampa Bay and not St Petersburg Bay. Not to mention the 4+1 rule for jerseys now. Would the St Petersburg jersey be considered a special jersey like the Boston Patriots Day jersey or the Jays Canada Day jersey?

Best solution? Use this as a Friday alt

[Walk-Off]

17 hours ago, McCall said:

In case this was never covered, this past summer, The Athletic did a player's poll on potential expansion cities they'd like to play in. Nashville was the overwhelming winner. Las Vegas was left off as this was done after the A's announced their intentions to relocate, but Oakland was on it and garnered no votes, less than Salt Lake City, Vancouver and San Juan, PR.

 

Oakland's inability to garner even one vote in that poll adds fuel to the fire of my mixed feelings regarding the current attempt to move the Athletics to the Las Vegas market.  As badly as I feel for the many working-class people who at least seem to abound within the present-day fanbase of the A's, and as miserly and as generally unsympathetic as John Fisher and the overall current A's ownership group have proven to be, I also wonder if too few people in the #FisherOut / #SellTheTeam movement have thought enough about what can and should be done to make Oakland a more attractive destination for not only owners of major-league professional sports teams, but also the people who get paid to play for such teams.

 

As an aside, while no one in that poll volunteered to express a preference for San José, I am curious as to how that particular Bay Area city would have fared had the pollster(s) made it an active option.

 

6 hours ago, Fowler said:

If Charlotte had a strong ownership group with a rock solid ballpark plan, they would be a shoo-in. 

 

6 hours ago, kimball said:

Raleigh seems like a better option. But, outside of that, I'd still rank Nashville ahead of Charlotte if they're only taking one east coast team.

 

The last time that I can recall any semblance of an active campaign for a Charlotte MLB team was at least two decades ago.  Since then, I have had an impression that the Charlotte area's business elite, media, and general public have all been resting on their proverbial laurels and assuming rather strongly and stubbornly that their metropolis has had a lock on getting an MLB team either through a relocation or from the next batch of expansion franchises.  To use a metaphor inspired by Aesop, I think that in terms of having a future as the home of an MLB club, Charlotte has been a hare while the likes of Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake City, and -- to use an example from within North Carolina -- Raleigh have all been tortoises.

 

1 hour ago, Dilbert said:

At a St Petersburg council meeting, the Rays gave a presentation on the new stadium development project. Apparently part of the agreement is the Rays play one game, wearing "St Petersburg Rays" jerseys (pending MLB approval).  To me this just screams the whole "Anaheim" schtick, that city forced the Angels to do, where the city didnt want to be little brother to Los Angeles so the team compromised with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim bs. St Pete doesnt want to play little brother to Tampa.

 

I seem to recall that Tropicana Field (originally the Florida Suncoast Dome) was itself a product of an unwillingness within St. Petersburg's business and political establishments to let their city accept a stature below that of Tampa; Bob Andelman's book Stadium for Rent: Tampa Bay's Quest for Major League Baseball seems to make that point clear in an early chapter.

 

Now, if, indeed, the Rays are obliged to wear a St. Petersburg-themed jersey as a condition of replacing the Trop with another ballpark in that city, then that only furthers my belief that Stuart Sternberg made a lazy and cowardly decision by choosing to keep the team in St. Pete and not seeming to work harder to secure a new home field in Tampa or elsewhere in Hillsborough County.  Oh, well ... at least a St. Pete tribute jersey worn by a St. Pete-based MLB team would do a lot to put the "City" in "City Connect".

[Dilbert]

Would this be considered malicious compliance? My solution: The team wears throwbacks of their former Florida State League club (1997-00), the St Petersburg Devil Rays.

 

[TBGKon]

12 hours ago, Dilbert said:

At a St Petersburg council meeting, the Rays gave a presentation on the new stadium development project. Apparently part of the agreement is the Rays play one game, wearing "St Petersburg Rays" jerseys (pending MLB approval).  To me this just screams the whole "Anaheim" schtick, that city forced the Angels to do, where the city didnt want to be little brother to Los Angeles so the team compromised with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim bs. St Pete doesnt want to play little brother to Tampa. I mean, theres a reason why its called Tampa Bay and not St Petersburg Bay. Not to mention the 4+1 rule for jerseys now. Would the St Petersburg jersey be considered a special jersey like the Boston Patriots Day jersey or the Jays Canada Day jersey?

 

 

 

Make it the City Connect and call it a day.  The Rays still have to release their City Connect, so its possible.

[BBTV]

13 hours ago, Dilbert said:

Would this be considered malicious compliance? My solution: The team wears throwbacks of their former Florida State League club (1997-00), the St Petersburg Devil Rays.

 

 

That's....... actually not terrible.

[SFGiants58]

1 minute ago, BBTV said:

 

That's....... actually not terrible.

The StP produces a better insignia than TB, especially with the ray. Better visual balance?

[BBTV]

1 minute ago, SFGiants58 said:

The StP produces a better insignia than TB, especially with the ray. Better visual balance?

 

If they wanted to make a more traditional hat (meaning a simple one or two color monogram without the ray), that STP would work really well.  I dig it.

[The_Admiral]

On 10/25/2023 at 11:46 PM, FiddySicks said:

I would love to see more players come out against owners. Hell, we should all be more hostile to billionaires just in general. 

Remember when Chelios basically threatened to send hired goons to Bettman's house?

[The_Admiral]

On 10/26/2023 at 10:08 PM, Dilbert said:

At a St Petersburg council meeting, the Rays gave a presentation on the new stadium development project. Apparently part of the agreement is the Rays play one game, wearing "St Petersburg Rays" jerseys (pending MLB approval). 

 

"St. Petersburg Rays" sounds okay, and if they'd rebranded as that in 2008 to make a cleaner break from "Tampa Bay Devil Rays," I wouldn't have minded, but this isn't just a dopey half-measure, it's a dopey 1/81-measure. 

[BBTV]

Would a TSP (or TStP) monogram (Yankees style) work?  Brighter colors, and maybe incorporate the stupid "glint" in there?

 

Alternatively, StP could change its name to Tampa Lite, and then we don't have an issue.

 

Alternatively, that area doesn't have a team.  That also solves all the problems.

[LMU]

It’s made all the more stupid that the team’s named after a freaking body of water and could just have easily been the Tampa Rays if not to appease Little Brother Across the Bridge.

[BBTV]

Just now, LMU said:

It’s made all the more stupid that the team’s named after a freaking body of water and could just have easily been the Tampa Rays if not to appease Little Brother Across the Bridge.

 

In their defense, while the metro area isn't called "Tampa Bay", colloquially the metro area is known as that, there's precedent with another sports team, and there's at least one newspaper that goes by Tampa Bay (Tampa Bay Times... although a google search reveals that it was the St Petersburg times up until around 10 years ago).

 

Though to your point, it would be like Philadelphia teams being called "Delaware Valley Eagles", though there's no city in the DelVal region that would possibly be ticked by that, with the possible exception of the state of NJ had the Sixers moved there as planned.

[dont care]

On 10/26/2023 at 11:08 PM, Dilbert said:

At a St Petersburg council meeting, the Rays gave a presentation on the new stadium development project. Apparently part of the agreement is the Rays play one game, wearing "St Petersburg Rays" jerseys (pending MLB approval).  To me this just screams the whole "Anaheim" schtick, that city forced the Angels to do, where the city didnt want to be little brother to Los Angeles so the team compromised with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim bs. St Pete doesnt want to play little brother to Tampa. I mean, theres a reason why its called Tampa Bay and not St Petersburg Bay. Not to mention the 4+1 rule for jerseys now. Would the St Petersburg jersey be considered a special jersey like the Boston Patriots Day jersey or the Jays Canada Day jersey?

 

 

 

They would probably make it the city connect jersey. I don’t know what special holiday St. Petersburg could connect to themselves to justify a special jersey, not even gasparilla which is a Tampa holiday. 

[The_Admiral]

I think the window for St. Petersburg representation has loudly slammed shut. For one thing, the city is named after the old capital of Russia, a country that everyone hates. "Tampa Bay" has fully superseded the old "Tampa-St. Pete" as the nickname for the whole metropolitan area* such that even the St. Petersburg Times started going by Tampa Bay instead. Maybe there was a time when branding as a St. Pete team rather than a Tampa team would have made sense, and an StP mongram would have looked neat on a cap, but that time was 1998 or 2008, and not now. 

 

*

Spoiler

I'll never be on board with "the Metroplex" for Dallas-Ft. Worth. That just sounds like a mid-tier office park, even if that's what Dallas kind of is.

 

[Digby]

I still think about the ads for “St. Petersburg-Clearwater” that their tourism board used to constantly push during the Boston televised sports events of decades ago. Though that maybe primed me to forever thing of it as a dorky tourist town and not a proper city with an MLB team. 

[TBGKon]

On 10/28/2023 at 8:16 PM, Digby said:

I still think about the ads for “St. Petersburg-Clearwater” that their tourism board used to constantly push during the Boston televised sports events of decades ago. Though that maybe primed me to forever thing of it as a dorky tourist town and not a proper city with an MLB team. 

It's still an organization, but it's focused on the Pinellas County (beachside) area.  Tampa proper has it's own board.

 

Living in the area for over 25 years, there's definitely a bit of a rivalry between the sides of the bay, and branding any team to one city vs the other would alienate the other one big time.  Tampa Bay is a proper locale identifier since the Rowdies and Buccaneers began using it almost 50 years ago.

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

       It’s made all the more stupid that the team’s named after a freaking  state and could just have easily been the Minneapolis Vikings if not to appease Little Brother Across the Mississippi.                           I tried to quote @LMU but the     mobile site is messed up  and keeps randomly deleting stuff.                  as a fan of the first two teams to use a state for its name, I'm fine with teams choosing their geographic marker                As long as it's obvious what state(s*) the team is in                     * see Carolina Panthers            

[Walk-Off]

Weekend link dump:

 

Ballpark Digest: Rays unveil St. Petersburg ballpark plan, ask for swift consideration from the city

 

Athletics Nation: Elephant Rumblings: Oakland Invites A's Fans to Tuesday Press Conference Urging Team to "STAY"

[BBTV]

Would be a lot nicer if more of the outfield wall was glass, like the area where the flag and retired numbers are.  It's obviously leagues better than the Trop, but still has a little bit of the warehouse vibe with that gray wall.

 

Remind me - is that the SoFi clear roof material?  If so, then cool - that's going to be a cool lighting scheme.  If it's plain white, then it could really make things look artificial.

 

Also looks like they're not leaving themselves much room to expand the scoreboard, which every team seems to do every decade.  Overall not bad for what it is.

 

[GDAWG]

A's fans want John Fisher to sell, but he's not going to do that because he's a cheapskate.  I think the only way he sells is if he does a "Daniel Snyder" and either he sells the team or MLB forces him to because of it.  Not spending money on the actual team won't make Fisher sell the team.