Look, it’s going to take a lot more than a week to move the concept of sharing the Rays between Tampa Bay and Montreal from the realm of ‘That’s totally bleeping insane’ to ‘Hmm, just maybe that could work.’ Even with some time for things to fester, overcoming the initial shock, anger, befuddlement, suspicion and hope created by initial word of the idea won’t be easy.
Yet in listening to Stu Sternberg and Stephen Bronfman tout the proposal in separate news conferences this week, there’s an admirable creativity of thought here, along with a healthy dose of audacity. This isn’t only a last-ditch attempt to keep the Rays connected to the Bay Area, it’s also a rethinking of how to make 81 home dates feasible in more markets.
Reducing the amount of games to sell in each locale concentrates the interest among fans who buy only a limited number of tickets per season, and reduces the liability. Splitting the schedule by peak-weather months in each region makes vastly less-expensive open-air stadiums realistic. Combining the two markets pulls the Rays out of Major League Baseball’s economic basement.
Skepticism aside, there was enough merit in the proposal to justify an exploratory green light from MLB’s powerful executive council. Bronfman wasn’t exaggerating when he said “it’s very groundbreaking when you talk about sport.”
“Stuart is a stand-up guy who does not want to strip the team out of the city,” he added later during the news conference Wednesday at the offices of his Claridge Inc. “So he’s been working long and hard to come up with creative solutions of how he can keep baseball in Tampa but at the same time have a bit of an economic benefit. Instead of having a $65-million payroll, maybe having a strong partner where his payroll could perhaps be around $100 million.”
That’s why examining the sister-city concept as a potential model for other iffy markets is a sensible exercise, even if there are countless devils to be found in the details. One in particular is how to handle the possibility of one market vastly outperforming the other in terms of revenue and the layers of resentment that may cause.
Conceptually though, at least, Major League Baseball has definitely come up with worse. Remember the failed contraction gambit, for instance? Or the purchase of the Expos from Jeffrey Loria in a convoluted franchise swap in which the reviled art dealer ended up with the Marlins while John Henry landed the Boston Red Sox and, ultimately the Washington Nationals were born?
Stay scheming, lords of the realm.
Sternberg’s protestations aside, there’s without a doubt a leverage-point element to all this and the difference in tone between his news conference Tuesday and that of Bronfman was striking.
Sternberg was in hard-sell mode, trying to convince a deeply skeptical market that he was acting in the best interests of the region having failed in multiple attempts at an 81-home-date solution. Even if it works, there’s a loss in all this for the region, and he outlined the stakes.
Bronfman, on the other hand, had only positives to accentuate, responding to a question about timing by saying it was out of his control but for obvious reasons, “the sooner the better.”
“We’re open for business,” he added.
That’s a good position to be in, supported by the reality that this proposal sets up parallel tracks for the Rays in two markets; one steadily gaining momentum towards the landing of an MLB team through expansion or relocation, one which keeps finding dead ends in each potential solution.
Longitudinally, Montreal wins here either way, barring a last-minute reversal in the Bay Area that leads to government funding of a covered stadium. And with Floridians justly leery after Loria’s Marlins duped Miami-Dade County into issuing $400 million in bonds to build a new stadium in a difficult-to-access part of the city that’s been sparsely attended and has a projected final cost of $2.6 billion, that’s highly unlikely to happen.
Which is why Bronfman could with full confidence say, “I think even in a split scenario, it’s a return of baseball permanently to Montreal.”
Next up, the details.
Sternberg must work through getting permission from the mayor of St. Petersburg to explore the project and examine sites for a new ballpark. Bronfman needs to work through the city of Montreal’s regulatory process surrounding developing of the area around and including the Peel Basin, where he wants to house a new stadium.
The latter is much further down the road than the former.
Theoretically, as ludicrous as it sounded when first floated, it may very well be possible for two geographically distant locales to successfully share a civic institution. A real go at it will require a lot of trust, a lot of faith between a region trying to keep its team from leaving, and a city trying to replace the club that left.
If it all fails, Montreal looks to be positioned to claim the Rays all for its own.
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