MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

23 hours ago, JayMac said:

Las Vegas is going to go from forbidden land to having a franchise in each of the Big 4 leagues, MLS, and NLL (and probably more) in less than 10 years.

 

Unbelievable.

 

This is pretty rich stuff for a city that's essentially going to disappear within a few decades due to lack of water.

[Camden Crazy]

On 5/23/2021 at 1:29 PM, tp49 said:

I wouldn't be concerned about the Raiders in Las Vegas at all.  Ever been on The Strip on a football Sunday?  Nearly everyone walking around is wearing some sort of NFL gear.  The NFL is more conducive to tourism than any of the other major sports and fanbases tend to travel well.  Eight to nine home games a year means that the games are more of an event or tourist attraction, and the nature of Las Vegas being what it is this is the only time it can honestly be said that a team can thrive without huge local support.  Further, the large group of Raider fans still living in the Los Angeles area, and traveled well to Oakland will probably travel to Las Vegas in a similar or greater fashion.  All of this is before we even start talking about locals.  The flashy new stadium walking distance from The Strip also doesn't hurt.

I’m going out in September and was trying to get tickets for the Ravens MNF game.  Cheapest single ticket is $900.  Demand seems to be okay.

[SpenserRM]

2 hours ago, Camden Crazy said:

I’m going out in September and was trying to get tickets for the Ravens MNF game.  Cheapest single ticket is $900.  Demand seems to be okay.

Man I felt this one. Never had to pay more than $80 to see the Bucs play because they were always a total dumpster fire. Can't get a ticket for less than $400 now... 

[Walk-Off]

https://www.tampabay.com/sports/rays/2021/05/27/rays-resurrect-ybor-city-stadum-idea/

 

• The Good News for Rays Fans
  • A new ballpark for the Rays in Tampa's Ybor City section might be gaining another chance at being built.
• The Bad News for Rays Fans
  • The Rays remain bound to their stadium lease in St. Petersburg through 2027.
  • Stu Sternberg is still demanding that at least one government somewhere in North America spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new stadium for the Rays, and he has made no obvious offer to spend substantially more of his own money on such a venue than what he has done so far as the team's principal owner.
  • Sternberg is insisting that Tampa and Hillsborough County, just like St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, settle for sharing the Rays with Montréal and thus letting the Rays be only a part-time user of a new ballpark in the Tampa Bay area.  Furthermore, Sternberg is continuing to spin his split season proposal as a way to enable governments in both the Montréal and Tampa-St. Petersburg metro areas to build open-air ballparks for his team instead of a government in either region having to spend more money in order to construct a roofed stadium for a full-time local MLB club.

 

On another note, I think that the time has come either for the Rays to have their own "Wheel of Relocation" thread or for the Oakland Athletics' "Wheel of Relocation" thread to be expanded to cover discussion of any reasonable possibility of any MLB franchise moving from one market to another.

[Crabcake]

As @Walk-Off said in the A’s thread, with how much discussion we’ve had recently about Tampa (both in the past, and the present), at this point it deserves its own thread. So here we go!

[SFGiants58]

I have a bunch of posts on this topic, so I’m just going to link a big history of them here:

 

 

On top of that, here’s a list of my history/concepts posts explaining how many teams almost moved to the area:

 

Tampa Bay Pirates

Tampa Bay Tarpons (ex-Minnesota Twins & Washington Sens/Nats)(Tampa Bay Twins/Tarpons variants)

Tampa Bay Athletics

Florida White Sox

Tampa Bay Cannons (ex-Texas Rangers/Washington Senators)

Florida Panthers (Forest Green/Creamsicle Recolor)

Florida/Tampa Bay Whitecaps (Seren Script with a triple blue palette)

Tampa Bay Mariners

Tampa Bay Giants - The Recreations

• Traditional font updated
• Floridian cursive
• Update explanation

Tampa Bay Sting Rays and wrap-up

Compilations

[GDAWG]

I find it interesting that for a decade Tampa wanted an MLB team and when they finally get one, people don't care.

[DukeofChutney]

Do the Rays have as clear a path to relocation as the A's ? (OK, so its not certain, but its likely they'd move to Vegas.)

 

I'm thinking that Nashville was already mentioned for the Athletics, and theres been talk of Montreal but do either of them have things in place for such a move?

 

[sky1324]

9 minutes ago, DukeofChutney said:

Do the Rays have as clear a path to relocation as the A's ? (OK, so its not certain, but its likely they'd move to Vegas.)

 

I'm thinking that Nashville was already mentioned for the Athletics, and theres been talk of Montreal but do either of them have things in place for such a move?

 

The Rays have already begun exploring a split-season format where they spend half their time in Tampa Bay and the other half in Montreal. Thus, most people tie them to Montreal. The only issue is the team's lease runs through 2027, so they have 6 years to find a new stadium or a new city.

[habsfan1]

I wish they'd finally build that baseball stadium, so MTL can finally welcome the Expos back. Still to this day, a large quantity of fans miss "Nos z'Amours".

[SFGiants58]

5 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

I find it interesting that for a decade Tampa wanted an MLB team and when they finally get one, people don't care.

 

It's much, much more complicated than that. I'll try to keep this short (LOL):

 

- The stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida Suncoast Dome/Tropicana Field/The Thunderdome, was built in a relatively inaccessible part of the market. It was constructed on top of a former gas plant in a neighborhood of downtown St. Pete that was "blighted" (dogwhistle used by city planners). It was too far from the large population centers in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, and as @See Red explained:

 

19 hours ago, See Red said:

Tampa itself is a bit of a mess with its sprawl and is considered a pretty miserable city for commuters to start with.  The stadium isn't near the population centers and it isn't near the wealth.  As far as I know, there isn't much in the way of public transportation to get from Tampa to the stadium in St. Pete and commuting there requires crossing one of two bridges and one of them, I-275, is one of the most congested roads in the country.

15 hours ago, See Red said:

They could be the 1927 Yankees and I'm still not crossing the Howard Frankland Bridge into St. Pete during rush hour to watch them play the freakin' Baltimore Orioles in a Costco. 

 

- The Trop is in such a poor location and is such a relatively-awful stadium (basically a warehouse with a baseball field), and the Rays have had such low lows over the years, it's easy to see why locals won't go to it.

 

- Despite the location being an issue, St. Pete city officials committed to building on the site in 1982 to "one up" Tampa in terms of getting a sports team and transforming the image of St. Pete away from that of a "retirement community." People in Tampa proper had a plan for a privately-funded stadium next to where the Bucs play (a far better location), but some money issues and the Trop's impending construction made that impossible.

 

- Jerry Reinsdorf's plan to blackmail the Illinois state legislature into building him a new stadium involved baiting St. Pete with a proposal to move the White Sox to The Trop when it was completed. T-shirts were even made, which I recreated.

 

 

- Jerry's interest sped up work on completing the Trop by 1989/90, which was for naught when the Illinois state legislature cleared public money for the White Sox.

 

 

- The hastened work on The Trop proved to be a problem for Morsani's group, which had failed to procure a team. They tried to acquire a majority interest in the Twins to move them, but that failed. They even tried with the A's and Rangers (maybe the Pirates too), both of which went awry. After The Trop's completing, plans for a Tampa stadium fell apart and Morsani committed to St. Pete's domed venue.

 

- When the 1991 expansion came around, both Morsani's group and a group led by St. Petersburg Cardinals owners/cousins Steve Porter and Joel Schur (outsiders, mind you) both led expansion groups. Morsani named the prospective team the Florida Panthers (after the failure, he sold the name to Huizenga for the NHL club), while Porter and Schur would've gone with the Florida or Tampa Bay Whitecaps.

 

 

- Morsani's group didn't make the initial cut of teams, while Porter and Schur's group got annihilated by money problems at the last minute. I go into more detail in my Defunct Saga posts:

 

 

- After this, Tampa Bay city officials, along with interested local businessmen like Vince Naimoli set their sights on teams with shaky stadium situations. The first was the Mariners, who were spared relocation by the (then-controversial) purchase of the team by Nintendo.

 

 

- The emerging ownership group, led by Naimoli, then pounced on the Giants. The Giants had recently failed to secure public funding for stadiums in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and a big one in San José. It's such a long story, I'm just going to quote post all of what I wrote there:

 

On 1/8/2019 at 4:32 AM, SFGiants58 said:

TAMPA BAY GIANTS – A giant misstep averted

 

Tampa Bay Sweepstakes Introduction

 

This Tampa Bay Sweepstakes entry is a doozy. It’ll be a little different from previous entries, as we have prototypes and a more complex story. Also, as a Giants fan, I have a bit more to say. Prepare for the longest post yet in this thread, with oodles of information!

 

After the San José failure in June 1992, Giants owner Bob Lurie put the team up for sale, announcing that he would consider both local and outside offers. Also, Commissioner Fay Vincent cleared the team to explore “relocation options” (but not to relocate). When no local bids immediately came, Lurie sent out team vice president Corey Busch to investigate relocation cities. Busch, of course, encountered Rick Dodge and Jack Critchfield.¹

 

Both Dodge and Critchfield were ready for Lurie. They had assembled an ownership group, led by Vince Naimoli, Vincent Piazza (father of Mike Piazza), and Vincent Tirendi. After impressing Busch in early July 1992, Lurie opened negotiations. On August 6, the Naimoli group flew to San Francisco to make a deal. They reached an agreement in principle to buy the team for $115 million (with a $10 million loan from Lurie). With a jubilant press conference in St. Petersburg the following day and several months of promoting the market, it seemed like Tampa Bay would finally have its team.²

 

 

(Dodge & co.’s joy contrasted with future San Francisco Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford’s dismay.³)

 

Meanwhile, San Francisco mayor Frank Jordan was trying to stop relocation. He had contacted Walter Shorenstein in June to form a group of investors to buy the team. They had several lead investors, the most notable being Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn, who arrived in August 1992. However, Shinn didn’t have enough capital to present a credible bid. After ejecting Shinn, the group recovered by upping various stakes and including a $10 million loan from Lurie, the same one he gave to the St. Petersburg bid.⁴

 

The timing worked well in San Francisco’s favor. The baseball owners ousted Commissioner Vincent in August, delaying discussions and leaving National League President Bill White (a former Giant) as the majors’ leader. On September 9, White gave the San Francisco investors an October 12 deadline to put together their bid. Naimoli protested that Lurie couldn’t consider a new deal until the St. Petersburg bid was off the table. White’s response was that it was the majors, not Lurie, considering the bid. Lurie’s loan did complicate things, but White’s reasoning was sound.⁵

 

With Safeway chairman Peter Magowan now leading the San Francisco group, the local investors presented a $95 million (later $100 million) offer on October 11. Now, the NL owners felt confident enough in the local investors to strike down the St. Petersburg group’s bid by a 9-4 vote. Despite the $15 million difference, the clubs decided that keeping the Giants in San Francisco was the right move.⁶

 

So, why did White give the San Francisco investors leeway and why did the owners decline a larger offer? Here are several reasons:

• MLB’s TV contract with CBS was in a tenuous position. Falling ratings saw CBS wanting to renegotiate their contract for a lower price. Moving a team from San Francisco (the 5^th-largest market) to Tampa Bay (the 13^th-largest market), would have turned the $1.06 billion CBS contract into a $500 million deal. Each team stood to lose $5 - $10 million. High-ranking CBS employee Larry Baer’s presence in the San Francisco group lends credence to this hypothesis.⁷
• Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley publicly opposed Tampa Bay’s bid. One can assume that it was both out of a sense of history (i.e., preserve the rivalry) and for financial reasons (e.g., travel costs and EST games – which is also why the Rockies and Padres’ ownership opposed the move). Like with Stoneham trying to move to Minneapolis, an O’Malley intervened to keep the Giants from being idiots.⁸
• Stadium for Rent argues that Wayne Huizenga and his Florida Marlins wanted to have some exclusivity in the state. Huizenga opposed the Mariners move, while also arguing for a “transfer fee” to compensate his club.⁹ Even though he ultimately voted in favor of the Naimoli bid (along with the Cubs, Cardinals, and Phillies), Huizenga’s opposition was notable.¹⁰ The book also suggests that the racism Bill White faced in St. Petersburg while playing motivated him to stop the move. That’s a bit dubious.¹¹

 

TL;DR: The dude in my avatar as Frank Jordan/the San Francisco investors/Bill White and his lady opponent as the Naimoli group.

 

 

This move would have been disastrous for baseball, from both a financial and historical perspective. A smaller TV deal have been a problem for small-market teams. The move also would have killed one of the greatest rivalries in baseball and condemned a legacy franchise to play in deeper obscurity. Maybe my biases are leading me to exaggerate the consequences of the move, I’m not sure. But the point stands – the Tampa Bay Giants should never have happened.

 

 

¹ Bob Andelman and Lori Parsells, Stadium For Rent: Tampa Bay’s Quest for Major League Baseball, 2nd edition (St. Petersburg, FL: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), 330; Robert F. Garratt, Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 155–56.

² Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, 331–41, 366–68; Garratt, Home Team, 158–59.

³ Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, 343; Gabe Zaldivar, “Giants’ Brandon Crawford 5-Year Old Self Featured in Coolest World Series Story,” Bleacher Report, October 26, 2012, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1386320-giants-brandon-crawford-5-year-old-self-featured-in-coolest-world-series-story; Ann Killion, “Brandon Crawford: Living the Dream - SFGate,” SFGate, October 8, 2012, https://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/Brandon-Crawford-living-the-dream-3930508.php.

⁴ Garratt, Home Team, 156–67.

⁵ Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, 370–71, 374–75; Garratt, Home Team, 165–66.

⁶ Garratt, Home Team, 167–69.

⁷ Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, 387–89.

⁸ Andelman and Parsells, 375–76, 385; Garratt, Home Team, 169.

⁹ Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, 389–91.

¹⁰ Garratt, Home Team, 169.

¹¹ Andelman and Parsells, Stadium For Rent, xv.

¹² Andelman and Parsells, 377; “FIELD OF DREAMS; SAINT PETERSBURG, FLORIDA, SEEKS BASEBALL TEAM BUT IS SHUT OUT,” accessed November 18, 2018, https://advance-lexis-com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/document/?pdmfid=1516831&crid=7789a833-5ce1-4b6f-8909-a6c0aee3ca68&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fnews%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A3SJK-KVY0-009C-B4RR-00000-00&pddocid=urn%3AcontentItem%3A3SJK-KVY0-009C-B4RR-00000-00&pdcontentcomponentid=166768&pdteaserkey=sr1&pditab=allpods&ecomp=5ynk&earg=sr1&prid=4d68ebef-a86a-43f8-bba3-8c5808eabf59.

 

 

- After that fell through, Naimoli issued a $3.5 billion lawsuit against baseball’s antitrust exemption proved to be enough of a credible threat to get expansion rolling in 1995. Tampa Bay would finally have a team, with Naimoli at the helm. One of his original naming plans was Sting Rays, but he wouldn’t pay $100,000 to a Hawaiian league team for the rights. This, of course, led to the Devil Rays name (with the "Manta Rays" phone poll), which in turn prompted the “ray of light” rebranding.

 

- Naimoli's cheapness continued, with a lack of a team e-mail, refusal to let outside food in, and constant tantrums about media coverage. The Rays being mierda for the first ten seasons was not helping matters.

 

 

- Naimoli eventually sold the team to Stu, who assembled a powerful front office and let them run their business largely uninterrupted. However, Stu's cheapness with players led to the now-successful Rays losing key players regularly and constant anxiety over the stadium situation. 

 

- Stu and company have floated numerous proposals over the years, each one using mostly public money. Each one has been pretty scuttled. These include:

 

• Al Lang Field site, scuttled 2008

 

• Carillion, scuttled 2012

 

• Ybor City, scuttled 2018 but revived this year

 

- In 2019, in the midst of continued stadium woes and heavily-romaticized Expos nostalgia reaching a peak, Stu announced the split-season plan between two new ballparks in the Tampa Bay Area and Montréal. This was a very stupid plan and mocked thoroughly. This is not exactly a way to increase fan interest, either.

 

 

- Now, Stu wants to revive Ybor for the split-season, while Stephen Bronfman (the prospective Montréal owner) wants to get public money from Quebec to build a stadium (dude, are you for real?)

 

- Meanwhile, Stu is being sued by the other Rays owners for negotiating secretly with Bronfman, which could cost Stu his ownership stake.

 

 

So, that's where we stand with Tampa Bay baseball. It's a big mess as to why fans "don't care" about it. The stadium, ownership, and a bit of the history dissuade them from caring.

[who do you think]

On 5/27/2021 at 1:53 AM, neo_prankster said:

There's gotta be a way to keep the T-Wolves in Minnesota.

 

If the NBA expands to Seattle and Vegas as rumored, where would the Wolves even go? No other city makes sense over just keeping them where they are.

If anything moving Minnesota to the east and hoping some Great Lakes rivalries spring up would seem to be the play.

[Ridleylash]

6 minutes ago, who do you think said:

If the NBA expands to Seattle and Vegas as rumored, where would the Wolves even go? No other city makes sense over just keeping them where they are.

If anything moving Minnesota to the east and hoping some Great Lakes rivalries spring up would seem to be the play.

Silver seems to think Vancouver should get a second shot, and having SEA-VAN-PTL all in one division seems like the obvious play. If not Vegas, I think Vancouver makes sense as a landing spot for the T-Wolves.

[who do you think]

12 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Silver seems to think Vancouver should get a second shot, and having SEA-VAN-PTL all in one division seems like the obvious play. If not Vegas, I think Vancouver makes sense as a landing spot for the T-Wolves.

 

Vancouver lasted six seasons the first time around, has about two-thirds the population of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and you're still gonna be second fiddle to the NHL. I don't see it.

[Walk-Off]

Yesterday, an anchor of the morning newscast on the Bay Area's Fox station interviewed Dave Kaval:

 

https://www.ktvu.com/video/938385

 

Kaval talked up the Las Vegas option so much in that interview that I have come away with the impression that Kaval, A's principal owner John Fisher, et al. are now to MLB, Oakland, and Las Vegas what Anthony Precourt was to Major League Soccer, Columbus, and Austin, respectively -- people who are eager to try to move a big-league pro sports team from a fairly large city that seems to be too boring for their tastes to an area that has noticeably fewer residents but also a considerably more exciting image (be it the hip, socioculturally cool, "weird" reputation of Austin or the hedonistic glitz of Las Vegas).

[Walk-Off]

20 hours ago, Crabcake said:

As @Walk-Off said in the A’s thread, with how much discussion we’ve had recently about Tampa (both in the past, and the present), at this point it deserves its own thread. So here we go!

 

I am quite sure that I made that suggestion in the 2021 MLB season thread, but I appreciate the shout-out just the same.

 

Anyway, Josh Solomon, a St. Petersburg city hall reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, has made a detailed thread of tweets recapping this past week's developments in the Rays' stadium saga:

 

https://twitter.com/ByJoshSolomon/status/1398399480874086404

 

Also, Charlie Frago, a co-worker of Solomon's who covers Tampa city hall matters, has revealed what one Tampa City Council member claims to have heard recently from Rays officials with regard to one potential option for the team's future:

 

https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2021/05/28/are-the-rays-listening-to-music-city-siren-songs/

[Red Comet]

At least Austin has a pretty bright future. The only way a team stays viable in Vegas is if Vegas maintains  its relative monopoly on high-end gambling/entertainment. Forget the potential future water issues, what do you think is going to happen the more states legalize sports gambling and/or decide to host their own palatial casinos? 

[SFGiants58]

It becomes the Atlantic City of the west, minus all the failed Trump business ventures. That’s not political, that’s just a fact.

 

It also doesn’t have the boardwalk or the reputation for filth that AC has.

[DEAD!]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

It becomes the Atlantic City of the west, minus all the failed Trump business ventures. That’s not political, that’s just a fact.

 

It also doesn’t have the boardwalk or the reputation for filth that AC has.

I would like to think Laughlin as the Atlantic City of the west. 

[ManillaToad]

hearing rumors of the A's moving to Branson, Missouri