Rays deal may sting

Column

By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 17, 2012

I doubt much will come from the ballyhooed meeting today between St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster and Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg on a new baseball stadium, unless Foster's head explodes from holding his breath until the Rays agree 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 soon as possible, let's move this 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 theoretically binding them to the Trop in Sternberg's face.

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

* * * * *I can't imagine worse timing. The lead story in the Tribune on Monday was about budget cuts in Tampa that will impact the poor. Everywhere we look, public services are reduced or eliminated, and a pungent odor remains from the deal our public servants gave the Buccaneers on Raymond James Stadium in the late 1990s. Think those deals are a thing of the past? Think again.

The Miami Marlins are preparing to open their new 37,000-seat, retractable-roof 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 tourism taxes.

The deal is so lopsided in the Marlins' favor that the Securities & Exchange Commission announced last month it will investigate. This serves as a warning when the Rays come calling.

* * * * *Assuming they can buy their way out of the remaining time on their St. Petersburg lease — an equitable solution, I would think — Hillsborough County leaders should insist the Rays open their books before getting a dime of public money through tourism taxes or any other source.

The website Deadspin leaked documents in 2010 showing the Rays made a combined $15 million profit for 2007 and 2008.

According to that report, they received about $39 million from Major League Baseball revenue-sharing during in each of those two years. That fact led Sternberg to threaten that fellow owners might "vaporize" the Rays because they were growing 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. According to the Scarborough Report, they are the most popular pro team in the market. Yes, Bucs, more popular than you.

We know the Rays eventually want to make a deal in Tampa, 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. I love baseball, but business is business.