Henderson: Rays face business decision if choosing Tampa

Column

I doubt much will come from the ballyhooed meeting today between St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster and Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg about a new baseball stadium, unless Foster's head explodes from holding his breath until the team agrees to a new deal in Pinellas County.

While that would be entertaining, it probably won't happen. So in the interests of seeing Tropicana Field go one-on-one with a wrecking ball as quickly as possible, let's move this thing along, shall we?

Mayor Foster, you're wasting oxygen and time in arguing to keep the Rays in St. Petersburg. Ain't gonna happen, no matter how many times you wave that lease in Sternberg's face that theoretically binds them to the Trop.

Sternberg hasn't said publicly he wants a new stadium in downtown Tampa, only that he wants to explore locations throughout the Bay area that happens to include downtown Tampa. My guess is he will decide he likes that one very much.

I also can't imagine worse timing.

The lead story in The Tampa Tribune on Monday was about budget cutbacks in Tampa that will hit the poor. Everywhere we look public services are being reduced or eliminated, and the pungent odor of the deal our public servants gave the Buccaneers on Raymond James Stadium still remains from the late 1990s.

Think those deals are a thing of the past? Think again.

A few hours to the south, the Miami Marlins are preparing to open their new 37,000-seat, retractable-roof baseball stadium on the site of the old Orange Bowl. The Marlins will pay roughly $155 million of the estimated $640 million cost. Put another way, the public will pay $485 million – mostly through tourist taxes.

It's so lopsided for the Marlins, the Securities and Exchange Commission last month announced an investigation into the whole process. This will not end well, and it serves as a warning here when the Rays come calling.

Assuming they can buy their way out of the remaining time on their lease in St. Pete (an equitable solution, I would think), leaders in Hillsborough should insist the Rays open their books before they get a dime of public money through tourist taxes or anything else.

The website Deadspin leaked documents in 2010 showing the Rays made a combined $15 million in profit for 2007 and '08.

According to that report, they also took in about $39 million in each of those two years from Major League Baseball in revenue sharing. That fact led to Sternberg's threat that fellow owners might "vaporize" this team because they were tired of subsidizing a team that was beating them.

He has a point. The Rays are an exceptional organization, probably the best in professional sports – not just baseball. According to the Scarborough Report they are the most popular pro team in the market.

Yes, Bucs, they're more popular than you.

We know the Rays eventually will want to make a deal in Tampa and maybe they can, but they better bring more to the table than a tin cup. Between the Bucs, Lightning and Yankees, Hillsborough taxpayers have paid for enough stadiums, thank you.

I love baseball as much as anyone, but business is business.