There are
about a billion Chinese who couldn’t care less, but along the I-4 corridor
between Tampa and Orlando, a gathering storm seems to be taking shape over
where the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team will be playing its games after 2027.
That’s the
last year the Rays are obligated to play all their games at a mausoleum called
Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Team
owners, discouraged by low attendance that is keeping them from becoming
multi-billionaires, have floated the idea that the Rays might consider sharing
each season with a “sister” city, Montreal. Despite the mayhem associated with players
needing two homes, dentists, pharmacies, pediatricians, currencies, car
repairmen, etc., the crazy idea seems attractive to Rays’ ownership that is so
perilously close to the poverty line.
In the
midst of this brewing international intrigue has stepped one Pat Williams, who
has got it into his head that the team should relocate completely (no split-season,
sister-city nonsense) to his hometown, Orlando, which he says, is enjoying a
growth spurt that neither Tampa nor St. Pete can compete with. And it would be easier, he points out, to
raise stadium-building money in a city that generates three times the tourist
taxes than Tampa-St. Pete combined.
Tampa Bay
would not be losing their team, Williams says, because it would just be moving a little to the
east, that’s all. No big deal.
Right now it’s
nothing more than idle talk, so the Chinese really shouldn’t be worrying too
much about how this will play out.
Williams hasn’t spoken to Orlando city officials, to Rays’ principal
owner Stuart Sternberg—not even to Disney.
However, if
the conversation ever got serious, it might be a good idea for Tampa mayor Jane
Castor to point out that the team could move east—to the State Fairgrounds—and
still be in the Tampa Bay region. It’s
half an hour east of Tropicana Field, and best of all, it’s only an hour or so
west of Orlando, a short ride for Mr. Pat Williams. No big deal.
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