Years ago when the push for a major league baseball team was going full bore, with car dealer and sports activist Frank Morsani out front, Tampa and St. Petersburg were vying for the team—no, not vying—fighting for the team. The Commissioner Bowie Kuhn turned back moves by our aggressors to buy the Texas Rangers and Minnesota Twins, and discouraged a run at the interested San Francisco Giants.

  Then came victory, a team, but it was not awarded to Morsani, but an unlikely out-of-the-baseball blue bidders, led by a frenetic Vince Namoli. They bought the team and put them in the stadiume in St. Petersburg where the Rays continue to play, and doggone well, for owner Stuart Sternberg. They are now one fine team managed by the academic Joe Madden with name stars and tradition growing. They are contenders, again. They are still playing in The Trop, with its roof rigging something of a problem, and not the desired attendance, 25th average a game among the 30 in the bigs, averaging 22,524 a game.
 
Then, when the choice was St. Pete over a Tampa site—we did not then have a proper stadium and still do not—Tampa folks, including Morsani, said fine, good luck, even to Namoli, who built a home in Tampa’s Avila, not too far from Tropicana facility boss Rick Nafe. And, that is the way it has been. The team has been fine even though the Dome is a tad far from some population centers on the Hillsborough side of the Bay.
 
The Rays want a different home, a baseball park home, and everybody in our Bay area wants to help them. Progress Energy CEO Jeff Lash heads the search committee.

A St. Petersburg waterfront ball park about where the old spring training monument,Al Lang Field stands has been ruled out by residents. So have other possible sites in that area. So, Lash’s Committee has been searching, with Downtown St. Pete and the Carillon acre site west of Howard Franklin Bridge. It is a favored site, as is renovated Tropicana Field.
 
Now, for the first time since the committee was named, Tampa/Hillsborough has been named as a possibility, like Downtown Tampa well north of the Times Arena and Convention Center on city property there, near the Port of Tampa. The area is fed by interstate traffic and Highway 60. It is a site mentioned before. Interesting.
 
But, St, Petersburg Mayor, Rick Baker, said no, no, no, no, not out of Pinellas. Said he has the contract with the Rays that could block such a move. Said he’ll sue if he has to.
“Any consideration of sites or market trade areas outside of St. Petersburg at any time would be inconsistent with the objective which I initially set forth to help baseball succeed in St. Petersburg and should not be entertained,’’ said Mayor Baker. Pretty clear.
 
But, wait, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said Tampa has no intention of trying to lure the Rays from St. Pete. “We are a region and I am supportive of the surrounding counties and the assets they have. If the Rays conclude that a site in Hillsborough better serves their long range needs, it will be analyzed, not by an overture from Tampa.’’
 
All on the site committee are from Pinellas, except Chuck Sykes of the Sykes Enterprises.
 
Tampa/Hillsborough County is in the same financial pickle as the rest of the world, with no money for a new bigtime major league baseball facility, not now, anyway.  And the problem with the Rays now is all estimates on making the Trop what baseball would want are out of sight.
 
I was there. Tampa backed away years ago so Pinellas and St. Petersburg could win the big league franchise, with the Trop in place. That was a long time ago with little to no change in the Dome. Anyway, Tampa supports the National Football League Buccaneers, the Lightning, who just got a lot better, we think, the Outback Bowl, and the University of South Florida Bulls big college program at Raymond James. Would big league baseball, with its long, long schedule, and a team pretty much treading water despite good efforts from manager and players, be able to survive?

We don’t know.
 
But, nobody on this side of Tampa Bay/St. Pete Bay would make a move on the Rays.
 
Would have to start there, and no one I know sees that happening.
But, St. Pete and its bigger players need to find more Rays fans to go to the games and buy their hot dogs, hey, even from over here.