All is not well in the Sunshine State for baseball.
In a story that Tampa fans, and baseball fans in general, have been tracking seemingly forever, today brought a new twist in the fate of the Tampa Bay Rays.
Last month, the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners was supposed to formally approve a bond deal that would allow for the creation of a new stadium in St. Petersburg. But before that meeting, Rays’ management sent a snippy letter to the Board expressing concern about any future delays – a letter that seemed to have some inside knowledge, as the Board did, in fact, postpone the issue of approving the bonds for another month. It was the second time such a delay had occurred, but, to be fair, the region had been hit with two devastating hurricanes, so even though the timing issue may have been legitimately critical to the Rays, other local priorities may have gotten in the way.
And yet another variable that popped up was the election of new County Commissioners in early November – two of whom seemed less enthusiastic about the stadium deal on the table.
Nevertheless, after the postponement, it seemed like the new stadium deal might be dead. The Rays made the case that the delays had made a 2028 stadium opening impossible, which would also lead to cost overruns that the team said it could not absorb. It was hard to tell if the letter was a declaration that the current deal was dead, a subtle request for the deal to be renegotiated, or if it was something else.
Well, Pinellas County officials apparently were wondering the same thing, so today they responded with a snippy letter of their own, demanding that the team clarify its intentions regarding the current stadium proposal, while not so subtly calling out what they considered to be contradictions in the Rays public statements and intentions.
You can read the letter here in the story from the local ABC affiliate in Tampa:
The Board has given the Rays until December 1 to reaffirm those intentions. And if they don’t … what then?
Who knows. Would the deal be dead, as both sides seem to be posturing? Or is that all that’s going on here … posturing? The Tampa Bay Times published an opinion piece today calling on both sides to not let the stadium deal get away:
What’s our take? We at TSI have been somewhat skeptical of this deal since the outset. Why? Because having talked to more than a few local fans and business owners over the years about the stadium issue, the one key theme that always came up was that St. Petersburg was the wrong place for the stadium. Time after time we were told that the team needed to move the ballpark to the other side of the Bay in Tampa, because fans didn’t want to trek all the way to St. Pete 80 times a season.
But attempts to create a ballpark deal in Tampa never worked out despite repeated attempts, and this new project in St. Petersburg emerged as the winning solution.
Until it isn’t?
It’s hard to know what’s happening behind the scenes here. There seems to be some lingering resentment among Board members about the Rays’ decision to play the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa rather than one of the Spring Training facilities in Pinellas County. But that decision was, by most accounts, pretty sound: Steinbrenner Field was the best-equipped stadium to host the team and offered the largest capacity. Despite the Rays’ well-documented attendance struggles, the difference between a 10,000-seat ballpark and a 12,000-seat ballpark was significant in terms of accommodating as many fans as possible (and driving as much revenue as possible out of a ballpark one-third the size of Tropicana Field).
But, perhaps in the light of day, Rays’ ownership is looking at the deal and wondering if Tampa Bay is the right place for them after all. The team’s attendance struggles aren’t assured to be solved with a new ballpark in the same exact location as the previous one, and with cities like Nashville, Portland, Charlotte, and others making various efforts to pursue expansion clubs, maybe the ownership group is having some second thoughts about their best path to success.
So are we seeing a genuine attempt to get this deal across the finish line? Or are we watching a a married couple posture their way through counseling on their way to a divorce? Stay tuned … December 1 is right around the corner.
