The Rays have arguably done their part. Asked to stay competitive with the obscenely deep-pocketed Red Sox and Yankees, the Rays have more than kept up. They were in the World Series last year and are in the hunt for the playoffs again this season.
But it’s not enough in a hybrid market such as this one. One without a strong corporate headquarters presence. One with a spread-out population and no mass transit. One with too many people with allegiances to wherever they came from. One with a leisure lifestyle that doesn’t prioritize summer baseball. And one where not enough people live close enough to substandard Tropicana Field near downtown St. Petersburg.
And now the ABC Coalition, the city’s own committee of business leaders, has served up an assessment that can’t be pleasing to City Hall. ABC said the Rays do, indeed, need a better facility (read: retractable roof), and it will likely have to be financed largely with public money. And, by the way, it really needs to be someplace other than downtown St. Pete.
Even more to the point, ABC concluded that there are three more logistically viable locations than downtown St. Pete. And two are in Tampa: West Shore and downtown.
In other words, expect the Rays to move out of their catwalk house long before their lease is up in 2027. That they will be leaving downtown St. Petersburg is now a given. The key question is will they be leaving this market? Somebody’s going to have to take one for the team to keep the Rays in Tampa Bay.
As for the Rays, per se, they continue to do their part in an untraditional, asymmetrical market. But will Major League Baseball be replaced by minor league parochialism?