It hasn’t exactly been a great off-season for the Tampa Bay Rays. It didn’t start off all that well; after all, they were coming off a disappointing 2024 campaign where they fell 19 games off the prior season’s pace and missed the post-season for the first time in six years. That 2019-2023 run wasn’t quite the pace of the Atlanta Braves, but was better than a whole lot of other teams’. They’re in need of a rebuild of sorts after losing a great deal of their vaulted pitching staff to injury and the talented face of their future, Wander Franco, to his own sadly twisted taste for underage companionship.
But as USA TODAY’s Dan Rorabaugh recounted last week, that turned out to be only the beginning of their troubles:
The night of Oct. 9, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm. Winds recorded at over 100 mph tore the roof off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, doing more than $55 million worth of damage to the 35-year-old stadium.
The field was deemed unplayable at least until the 2026 season, and because the team was scheduled to move to a new $1.3 billion stadium in 2028, there were questions over whether the stadium would be rebuilt at all.
The Rays were originally supposed to move into a new stadium in 2028 as part of a massive renovation project of the Historic Gas Plant District in St. Petersburg. That timeline was extended to 2029 after the hurricane made Tropicana Field unplayable, but negotiations over payments to rebuild the Trop put the whole deal in jeopardy. The Rays have said delayed votes from Pinellas County commissioners contributed to delays in construction and therefore higher costs than they could afford. Basically, they want more public funds.
In a world where timing is often everything, this was clearly a sich where it was off. Unprecedentally destructive storms that caused way more and less reported damage than the Tropicana Dome in a state that’s being populated by a lot of climate change deniers can alter a lot of timelines. And it’s not like this was a metropolitan area that embraced the team in the first place.
The Rays have broken 2 million in attendance exactly once in their history–their 63-win debut season of 1998. They won their first (and, to date, only full-season) AL pennant in 2008 and began a stretch where they finally shed the ill-advised “Devil” portion of their nickname and since then have played at a more than credible .554 overall clip which has seen playoff appearances in more than half of those seasons, including the aforementioned five consecutive year meld. Yet home attendance in any of them didn’t exceed what they drew in 2014–a year where they fell 15 games from a playoff position to a sub-.500 mark, pretty much what happened in 2024.
So the ensuing news we saw last week was both upsetting and unsurprising, as the DESERET NEWS’ Dennis Romboy reported:
Front Office Sports reported Thursday that the Rays’ days in the Tampa area could be numbered after the club announced it is not moving forward with a plan to build a $1.3 billion ballpark in St. Petersburg.
“The franchise had a March 31 deadline to meet certain obligations to release $600 million in public funds toward the planned stadium. The Rays, however, would be responsible for cost overruns beyond its $700 million contribution, and say that delays in the legislative approval of those public bonds introduced additional costs they cannot bear alone,” according to the story.
The Rays’ owner, Stu Sternberg, said in a statement that after careful deliberation the club concluded it could not move forward.
Exactly why a Salt Lake City-based reporter felt this was newsworthy is reflective in the fact that they are among a whole bunch of metropoli that will gladly embrace a baseball franchise, particularly one with the track record of the Rays as opposed to an expansion team. The city’s still-to-be nicknamed Hockey Club is competing for a playoff berth in their first season after rescuing the Arizona Coyotes from civic indifference, and they somehow continue to draw credible attendance for the NBA-worst Jazz (yet another relocated franchise, though to be fair it’s now been 46 years and counting since they left their New Orleans roots and they’re still seeking their first title).
Besides, it may just be that the specific marriage of Tampa Bay and the Rays is the issue even more so than the stadium itself. Turns out that some form of professional baseball actually does have appeal, as CBS SPORTS’ Steven Taranto reported earlier this week:
In a testament to the growing popularity of the team, the Savannah Bananas sold out Raymond James Stadium for a Saturday night game against their touring partner, the Savannah Party Animals. The Bananas commemorated their first game in an NFL stadium in style, as they played in front of a sold-out crowd of 65,000 at the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Bananas — effectively the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball — have become an increasingly popular act in recent years, as “Banana Ball” has gained mass appeal to the point that they had sold out Major League Baseball stadiums prior to their first sellout of an NFL stadium. The sellout for the Bananas makes for an interesting juxtaposition compared to Tampa Bay’s professional baseball counterpart.
Interesting isn’t the only adjective I’d apply in this case. Ungrateful is the one that seems to rise to the top of my list.
Major League Baseball appears hell-bent on keeping the Tampa media market in their mix given its size, but a quick look at the nominal ratings and the uncertain status of FanDuel Sports makes that issue somewhat moot. I’d offer that having the Marlins play a portion of their schedule in Tampa would more than fill whatever void would be left. It’s not like too many Miami-based fans would miss them and if you’ve seen how the Marlins are drawing, there wouldn’t be all that much gate at risk. It’s entirely possible that the Rays, even handicapped by playing this season in the 11,000-seat minor league ballpark that typically is home to the Yankees’ spring training games might outdraw whatever Miami puts on the field this year. And if you’re worried about how the Marlins might be embraced assuming the Trop ever gets fixed, given their record is eerily similar to those 1998 and 2014 Rays they should go over juuuust fine.
And if the Rays were to go elsewhere–if not to Salt Lake City, then perhaps Nashville, Portland or even Orlando (a Florida media market not far behind Tampa) will turn out and watch to practically the same level of embracing that the cold shoulder of Pinellas County is currently offering their team.
As some of us learn more painfully than others, some relationships are irrepairable. This one has all of those signs and then some. The good folks of Tampa Bay will be fine, thank you. Let’s hope the Rays have their crack at true love for once.
Courage…