A Home for Baseball in Florida

A fraction of the fans at the annual Rays Fan Fest in 2013.

Why can’t a state with year-long warmth, constant sunshine, and numerous retired northerners who have nothing better to do than spend some cash at a family friendly event, manage to cultivate a thriving baseball culture? Throughout the years there have been a number of reasons ranging from weather, to politics, to a lack of central transportation in the major cities. Those are all issues that have been dealt with or can be, barring a lack of brain power by our elected officials.

Having been born in Miami and living there until 2000, I was lucky enough to experience the birth of Major League Baseball in Florida. I matured with it. I lived less than 10 minutes from the stadium. My father took me to the inaugural game of the Florida Marlins in 1993, and I still have the ticket to this day. In 1997, my father went all out and took me to over 30 games (including a pennant game and game 1 of the World Series). Needless to say, I love baseball and want nothing more than for it to thrive in Florida.

My family moved to Tampa, Florida in 2000 and from there we switched our alliance to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I suffered with them for eight long seasons and in 2008 the Tampa Bay area was revived with a surprisingly scrappy, championship run. The newly dubbed “Tampa Bay Rays” breathed life into a city that was flat lining on their sports teams. Rayhawks were the new fashionable haircut (a mohawk dyed blue), the local bars were tuned into the games every night, and everyone had heard of the young phenom, Evan Longoria. The city had gone Rays-crazy and new rivalries were formed the Yankees and Red Sox. Since that year, the Rays have made it to the playoffs three times and have become one of the best run sports team in the country. All of the success is now in threat of being stripped of the Bay area, by some internal threats.

Boy sporting the Rayhawk.

For many years, Tropicana Field has been known as the laughing-stock of the baseball community. People have joked that it should have its own page in the umpire’s handbook, because of all the rules that are in place for the stadium due to its fixed dome. It is the only baseball stadium left with a fixed dome and causes the ball to get lost in a white backdrop and is the only stadium that I know of that has a painted warning track (strip of clay that outlines the filed, so that fielders know that they are close to a wall when tracking the ball), and has no true bullpen; which is a threat to any bullpen pitcher that is warming up. To the owner’s credit, they have made major modifications to the stadium, but a polished turd is still a turd.

I can’t say the attendance has dropped, because there never was a true attendance. With the stadium being placed in an industrial city with a population of just over a half-million and a drive that takes at least 30 minutes one way (with gas prices hitting record marks every year), it is hard to build a fan base. It’s no coincidence however; that the Rays are dead last in attendance, but in the top ten team for television viewership. The team plays great baseball and the Tampa Bay area knows it.

Unfortunately, the Rays agreed to a lease with the city of St. Petersburg through 2027 and faces many obstacles on both sides of the Bay. St. Pete does not want to give up the team, because they feel losing the team would hurt their city. The mayor of St. Pete, Bill Foster, refuses to have any talks about letting the team leave and has prevented the team from looking across the Bay in Hillsborough county. If the Rays somehow manage to bypass that first hurdle and find a site that is suitable for a new ballpark, they must ask themselves, “Who is going to pay for it?”. They city of Tampa is looking at all possibilities for to make this happen right now, which shows that they are trying to make sure baseball stays in Tampa, because if the MLB has to step in, the Tampa Bay area will undoubtedly lose their ball club. All of these problems have caused the commissioner of the MLB to say that, “MLB has lost faith in the Tampa Bay area…”.

If the mayor of St. Pete does at least open negotiations, he will have single handedly driven a succesful professional sports team from the Tampa Bay area and that will be his legacy throughout the state.