Is a Shared Baseball Season with St. Pete and Montreal a Real Possibility?

Traveling Baseball The New Circus

Tampa Bay, Fl
Opinion by: E. Eugene Webb PhD
Author: In Search of Robin, So You Want to Blog.

Looking for a good no hysteria review of the Rays/Montreal issue/ Check out this Forbes Article by Eric Macramalla: Shared Custody of the Rays By Montreal and Tampa Area Would Face Legal Hurdles.

I watched the Sturnberg Press conference and you can catch the WFLA Channel 8 video at Rays Discussing Possibility of Montreal Merger.

Stu Sternberg

It was interesting to watch Stu Sternberg finally admit what former baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was true when he said St. Pete is not a major-league baseball market. That was some time in the late 1980‘s as the City of St. Pete campaigned to get a team.

It has taken decades for the so called “smart” people within the Rays organization to figure out old Bud was more intuitive than could have ever been dreamed.

Bud Selig

Since neither Montreal nor Tampa Bay seems to be a real baseball market, the question is: are they half a market?

My guess is no, but then I am no Bud Selig.

The idea that a baseball team that is a cross between the circus, and the Traveling Wilburys will succeed seems a bit more like fantasy than reality.

All of this will be couched in multi-use facilities with lots of studies showing how it will succeed and the vast economic impact in both communities.

If you dig around in the St. Pete public records and archives from the 1980s, you can probably save some time and money on consultants by just changing a few dates and numbers on those same reports supporting the Dome.

Note that little of it panned out.

This looks to me like an opportunity for two cities to waste a lot of time, throw away a lot of money and end up with a colossal failure.

I am not sure if Sternberg’s pitch is a heart-felt pitch to save his baseball team or a P. T. Barnum pitch along the lines “there is a sucker born every minute."

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