One Team, Two Cities

One Team, Two Cities. Cockamamie idea, or Careful Calculation?

This past summer Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg offered us some refreshing brutal honesty which is lacking among owners who are having trouble getting a new stadium built. Rather than hiding behind lawyers or hold secret boardroom meetings with other cities, he told the media and fans about his doubts as to the ability for Tampa Bay to support a full-time team. The press conference offered a grim outlook and didn’t exactly instill any optimism for the team’s history. He then laid out his suggestion of the Rays splitting the season between two cities. While he looked a bit uncomfortable and nervous, he seemed confident in his idea while also prepared for the media shellacking and questioning of his leadership. Many immediately wrote the idea off, refusing to listen to the case as to why it could work. He pled with fans and writers to give him an open mind to pitch “a new norm, a better norm” for not only the Rays franchise, but the fans and ownership team in Montreal and the city of St Petersburg.

It seems that since the day they began to play, the Tampa Bay Rays have been several steps behind and fighting a constant uphill battle. They call a stadium home that was out of date before they even made their first expansion draft selection. Their “fanbase” has a hard time showing up even when they’ve fielded many competitive teams this past decade. Even a World Series appearance and repeated postseason runs have failed to draw fans. Their payroll philosophy, while it works, is only comparable to the philosophy of Spirit Airlines. The low attendance has forced them to not even operate part of their stadium on gamedays! Many people look at them and think “There must be a better way!”.

In an interesting coincidence, just as the “Devil Rays” began play in west Florida, the Montreal Expos were entering their final years of existence. With their contraction from the league or relocation all but inevitable, Nos Amours’ status was in limbo. Despite a 1994 team that was poised to win their first World Series, the Expos had failed to keep their young stars in town, and it all but doomed them. Poor management with ulterior motives (looking at you Jeffrey Loria), failure to secure funding to build a new downtown stadium, and fan support dwindling to levels even lower than the Rays in their darkest days led to Major League Baseball managing the franchise and moving them to Washington DC after the 2004 season. Only 8 years later the team that looked like a growing dynasty that featured some of the best players of a generation no longer existed. It left many people wondering “what could have been” for baseball in Quebec.

This bold new initiative could lead to something like nothing we’ve ever seen before. In this article, we look at why it could be beneficial for both cities, and professional baseball as a whole.

Before we look into the modern plan for baseball in the City of 100 Steeples, let’s take a look at their past problems which caused them to lose their team:

1. Lack of true ownership. The Expos original owner Charles Bronfman owned the team from 1969 to 1991. He sold the ‘Spos to a 13 member “consortium” who only managed the team for 8 years. This consortium had 11 members who offered money to help buy the team, but looked at those funds as charitable donations. They made it clear to Claude Brochu who was the principle owner that they would not provide any more money to support the team. Pretty much he was on his own when he didn’t have the money to truly run the team. When Claude ran out of money and desire to be in charge Jeffrey Loria got involved, and needless to say Loria did what he does best and that is steal from taxpayers and run teams into the ground. He even took the Expos computers and scouting reports when he left to own the Marlins!
2. The all too common bad stadium scenario. Lets face it, Stade Olympique was built for…..wait for it…the 1976 Olympics, not the Expos. It cost over a billion dollars to feature the elusive retractable roof, which was never installed! Not only that, it was in a terrible location for fans. Being built way north of downtown made going to games inconvenient, and for many years not worth it due to lack of competitiveness. Plain in simple the fans hated that stadium for a mountain of reasons and was a terrible place not only to play but to watch a game as well. They came close to going downtown in the late 90s, but refusal from the provincial government to help finance Labatt Stadium led to the collapse of the plan. It was the first domino to fall in the departure of the team.
3. Talent fled at their first chance. Many people don’t realize just how many MLB legends played in Montreal, yes really I promise it’s true. This is where The Hawk (Andre Dawson), The Rock (Tim Raines), The Kid (Gary Carter), and Vlad (Sr.) started their Hall of Fame careers. The Expos helped make the Alou’s one of the most famous baseball families. It was in Montreal where Pedro Martinez perfected his craft to become maybe the best pitcher of his day. It’s where Jackie Robinson got his start with the AAA Montreal Royals, and was readily welcomed when many others turned their backs on him. Their 1994 team featured a World Series MVP, World Series champions, an NL MVP and batting champion, a Cy Young winner, and a Hall of Famer. The only problem is that all those accomplishments came all within 5 years of when they were traded away from the Expos for almost nothing or signed elsewhere. Things like unfavorable exchange rates affected their salaries, playing in Olympic Stadium was rough on their bodies, and the culture was not conducive to success. Andre Dawson was rumored to say that the day the Expos traded him to Chicago was the best day of his baseball career. If that’s the mentality of a player enshrined in Cooperstown, that’s a sign that no sustained success was possible for the previous Expos.

Reasons why this is beneficial for both cities:

1. Both cities want a team, but extreme weather creates a problem and burden. Whether its fixed or retractable, the cold winters in Canada and broiling summers in Florida make an indoor environment all but a necessary evil. Playing in each city curing their prime weather seasons makes the game more enjoyable to attend, but also will drastically reduce construction costs. What true baseball fan wants to watch a game indoors? By eliminating the need for a roof, it also opens up the chance to not needing taxpayer funds!! The Tampa Bay ownership also owns the USL’s Rowdies who play in downtown St Petersburg. This allows both teams to share a stadium, clears scheduling issues, and benefits hotel and restaurants by bringing multiple fanbases to the downtown area.
2. Prime downtown development. The common saying among baseball teams today, outside of Atlanta, is “It’s all downtown”. The closer you can be to the heart of your city the better. Part of this trend is the development of neighborhoods centered around the stadium. Montreal has a site selected in the Peel Basin area of Montreal which is comfortably next to the heart of the city and can have an identity centered around the team and new stadium. Tampa Bay offers a plethora of options. Not only could the many parking lots around Tropicana field be turned into a stadium, the Rays also own Al Lang stadium on the waterfront, and the city of Tampa seems open to the idea at the site of their failed Ybor City plan. While a long and tough legal negotiation and battle with the city of St Petersburg is ahead of them there is certainly a compelling argument as to why it’s not only a good baseball opportunity, but a huge economic opportunity for the city of St Pete.
3. Test if uncertainties of a full-time team are warranted. Ideally, both of these cities could enjoy the luxury of a full season team. Could this be a trial run litmus test to see if Montreal and Tampa Bay can prove people wrong about the negative perception of their fan support and corporate commitment? If the fans prove their loyalty to one city but not the other, then it will reveal where the true fruit will grow.

Why Tampa Bay ownership should maintain baseball in Tampa, even for half a season:

1. LOCATION. Tampa Bay is a growing region in population and corporate presence, but they’re currently at the bottom of the barrel in terms of corporate support in professional baseball. Montreal is in a similar state of affairs. Combine the two cities and that leads to two cities and corporate bases contributing to one team. Tampa is also a lucrative TV market. Couple that with another city’s media reach and TV revenue, creates significantly more financial resources for the team. Outside of those reasons, the beginning of baseball season backs up perfectly to snowbird and winter vacation season, and West Florida is one of the best vacation destinations. This creates a reason for northern fans to make a special trip to Florida to enjoy all that the region has to offer and watch their favorite team in their season home.
2. An established (somewhat of) fanbase. While attendance is a chronic problem for them, there is a following for the team. The average attendance for an MLB team is said to be 5 games a year. By compressing that frequency from 6 months to three months will, in turn, increase the number of fans per game, leading to more parking, concessions, and merchandise revenue. The same idea goes for the fans north of the border. While fans initially overwhelmingly polled indicating that they would rather have no team that share the Rays, I’m sure attitudes will change. It doesn’t make sense to completely turn your back on the fans, especially the committed fans who can make this truly a lucrative arrangement.

Why baseball can work in Montreal:

1. Established and committed ownership is already in place. Since the day the Expos left for Washington DC there have been silent efforts to bring baseball back to Montreal. Charles Bronfman’s son Steven has led a serious and committed charge to bring them back. A stadium location in MTL’s Peel Basin has been selected and purchased, and they read to privately finance their newly constructed stadium. The only public money they’re asking for is for infrastructure and transportation improvements. Since his father sold the team in 1991 the fact that they never had owners who really had any business owning a baseball team was their biggest issue.
2. Unfinished business. I haven’t met many Expos fans, but the ones I have met are convinced that the player strike not only caused them to lose their team but cost them a World Series as well. By all accounts there is still a lot of love for the Expos in the City of Saints. They’ve packed their old home of Olympic stadium to watch the Blue Jays play meaningless spring training games the past few years, and Exposfest keeps the history and memories alive for the fans. Let’s not forget that Pedro gave the fans of the Expos a shout out during his 2004 World Series celebration. He was saddened that the fans would no longer have a team and dedicated his ring to them.
3. Even if the Rays don’t come, its free publicity. Its all but inevitable that MLB will soon expand to 32 teams. The only roadblock to shovels going into the ground is the existing stadium issues with the Oakland Athletics and our often-mentioned Rays. Let’s say that the Rays are unable to secure any type of stadium deal with either St Pete or Tampa, this campaign all but solidifies a great opportunity to simply move to Montreal full time. Stadium plan is in place, reestablishment of a ticket sales market, and an existing team brand and history. Now let’s say that a miracle happens and they get their draft stadium in Florida and it no longer becomes necessary to share the team. Through the entire negotiation and marketing process, it’ll hopefully cause people to realize the opportunity that exists with the Montreal ownership team. Either way for them, this causes baseball to come back to Quebec.

What inevitable problems with arise, but could still be solved:

1. Players Union opposition and player reluctance. Its only natural to expect that the player and the MLBPA will have many questions that will need to be answered before anytime comes to fruition. It would be a lot to ask and a tough sell to players. Why would anyone sign with a team when you’ll only play there for 3 months of the year. The send off to Montreal would be in the middle of the summer, the heart of kids summer vacation. It would be a huge strain on families in terms of travel, accommodations, and just extra wear and tear. I think that it would be generous of the team to perhaps offer to house the players’ families while they’re in Canada, either at a team owner hotel, or perhaps building this idea into the stadium itself! Sternberg addressed this that it should be attractive to players purely because there will be more revenue, therefore leading to higher salaries. High salaries can help, but there are many factors that might make higher pay not even enough to sign with them. The key to overcoming this is to go above and beyond alleviating these concerns.
2. St Petersburg isn’t taking this announcement nicely. When Stu Sternberg made this announcement St Pete mayor Rick Kriseman immediately fired back, stating that he would never agree to an agreement like this. He appears to have softened the tone a bit by saying that public funds would only be provided for a full-time team. It was also made clear that the Rays would be held to their stadium lease through 2027. It has been said that the Rays hope to make their plan a reality by 2024. It appears Sternberg will have to make major concessions in order to get on the city’s good side. Just how big will those concessions be? We will have to wait and see.
3. How will the team be staffed and branded? Montreal-Tampa Rays? Tampa-Montreal Rays? A sea creature doesn’t exactly seem like a Canadian team’s mascot. Will the game have French social media accounts? Will the same marketing and corporate staff work in both cities? Will they live in their home countries full time? Who hosts postseason games? These questions are among the many that will have to be asked and answered. It would appear though that the team will run into a lot of trouble recruiting and retaining team middle and lower management. Similar to the players’ concerns, is it possible or even reasonable to ask people to move away from home for 3–4 months of the year? While it might be fun for many, for the vast majority it appears to be a major turnoff.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I fully understand the deep skepticism and doubts about whether this truly “off the wall” idea makes business sense, or legally is even worth pursuing. It would make for an amazing chapter in the long story of baseball history. Stu Sternberg was adamant in his press conference that this was what he felt was the best way to preserve baseball in Tampa Bay. It’s clear that he wants to keep the team in Tampa, but it was also clear that he also decided to take the tactic of honesty of how desperate the situation is. Its easy to interpret this as a way to soften the inevitable blow of the Rays leaving. On the other hand maybe he’s truthful about his desire to save the Rays, all the while doing what it takes to increase the teams’ resources and make them more financially competitive. Whether an honest effort or an elaborate scheme you have to respect Stu for being gutsy enough to take the initiative and be willing to fight the PR and legal battles that this will entail. Lets give him some credit, and also give him what he’s asked for all along which is a simple open mind. Isn’t that a simple request that we ask from people every day? Lets give him a chance and save our judgment for the final result.

-James Loeffler
Sports Throne Blogger