SocraticGadfly: Tampa Bay doesn't deserve a baseball team

October 04, 2023

Tampa Bay doesn't deserve a baseball team

Not with the lowest attendance at a playoff game in more than 100 years. (I also have to "love" that the Trop has a listed playoff capacity of just 26K because the Rays cover up seats because nobody shows anyway.)

Yes, 3 p.m. start, and not finalized until Sunday. Still. Other teams don't do that.

Oh, Tampa-St. Pete is NOT "small market" either. The metro area is bigger than St. Louis of my Cardinals, as well as bigger than Baltimore, bigger than Denver and the same size as San Diego.

I discussed metropolitan sizes and more nearly a decade ago. Nothing's changed since then, other than the special pleading of Rays fans who talk about how hard it is to get to the Trop.

No harder than the Bay Area, I'm sure. Not that much harder than St. Louis (two rivers, one separating Illinois fans, the other St. Charles fans), Cincy (a river separating Kentucky fans), etc.

So, what we have on this r/mlb post at Reddit is a bunch of Rays fans special pleading. A few semi-special pleaders at least admitted what I also said nearly a decade ago in a second post: neither that area, nor Miami, is MLB territory.

St. Petersburg City Council and Pinellas County Commission are set to discuss their $287M and $312M "contributions," respectively, later this month. I'm sure the 19K attendance will further undercut this idea among much of the general public. It also leaves open the question of how the team will fund its half. Nor does any of this money talk about the Rays' proposed mixed-use development around the stadium, detailed here.

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