Thanks, Frank, for your early baseball pioneering

Posted Sep 17, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Sep 17, 2010 at 03:40 AM

Not sure it could be much more dramatic than it has been these last three baseball days at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, the Tampa Bay Rays winning two of three climactic games from the equally-talented New York Yankees.

“It was about as good as it could be,” said Frank Morsani who sought to be the first owner of the Rays, became one for a short while, and now fantasizes on what these Rays might have been had he and his ownership group won the team.

No complaints here. How could there be? The Rays and the Yankees both played near-flawless baseball in those games, captivating television and live audiences at the Trop. Well, I mean the 27,000 plus live spectators at the Trop, meaning about that many empty seats, too, in that facility that had to become home to the Rays. It is not a perfect baseball facility and it never will be.

“But, it is what was available at the time we got the franchise,” said Morsani, “and if it had not been there, the Rays may today be the San Antonio Whatevers. It was that close, but we got the team and I suppose if anyone buys these Rays and chooses to move them San Antonio may well be back in the big league picture. There are still only two major league teams in the state of Texas.”

Morsani is suggesting, as others have, if the Rays’ circumstances in Tampa Bay are not improved, then San Antonio may be getting back into the picture. He did not add that; I did. San Antonio remains waiting in the wings for a big-league team. Those 27,000 empty seats at Rays-Yankees games can surely be used as evidence if San Antonio chooses to do that.

At least two ownership-pursuing groups have suggested they might like to buy up the Rays package to include the franchise and the arena and the land under it, perhaps using that U-shaped property north of the Lightning arena, south of the interchange of I-275 and I-4 in downtown Tampa just west of the Port of Tampa.

No one has publicly declared in favor of such a scheme, but privately those two groups have.

Clearly, the drama of the recent Rays-Yankee games at Tropicana Field has sparked this possibility in the future, intensified by the 27,000 empty seats.

Their studies show that about 40 percent of the attendance at Tropicana comes from Pinellas County, 30 percent from Hillsborough, and 30 from other areas. If the stadium were built in downtown Tampa, most believe attendance from Hillsborough, northeast and south of Hillsborough would greatly expand, as it does for the Lightning. The other possible Hillsborough location mentioned now is west of downtown Tampa near Raymond James Stadium. 

Thinking here is that the 27,000 empty seats at the Tropicana for these high profile Rays-Yankees games are important fodder for the case of moving the Rays to downtown Tampa, which is the centerpiece for Florida fans grown accustomed to attending downtown events. That experience and trend is telling.

Morsani certainly did not want to get into that speculation, but in other times he had long felt that downtown Tampa was where major sports were meant to be. I remember driving with Morsani through Tampa on the way to Tropicana when he said, “I believe in the long run, we will be back here,” pointing to downtown Tampa.

He is no longer in that capacity in that pursuit, spending more of his time now working with his good wife, Carol, working on the Performing Arts Center or, as he was yesterday, leaving his tractor work on his farm north of Tampa for recollection of those days of his involvement with baseball.

“I regret we did not get it at the start and keep it,” he said, “but in the end, after what I saw in baseball politics, well, things worked out for the best for me.” 

Frank Morsani is one fine man, one fine Florida and Tampa citizen.