Universally hating Stu Sternberg This is actually the most normal thing in Tampa Bay. Credit: cityofstpete/Flickr

Dear Mr. Sternberg,

I am a scholar by training, an English Professor, and I believe in scholarly research. I believe in evidence and informed consensus. So ask 100 university economists, "should a municipality fund a sports stadium?" The answer is an overwhelming no.

The journal Economic Research opines, "local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises." A Brookings Institute Report states that a "new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity." The National Association of Sports Economists concludes the same: "The fact that sports subsidies continue to be granted, despite the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that no tangible economic benefits are generated by these heavily subsidized professional sports facilities, remains a puzzle.”

So why do municipalities continue? Why specifically should Tampa Bay leaders play along with stadium demands—particularly your boondoggle of a split season?

A "puzzle," the math-heads say.

So let's talk heart.

Long before I dreamed of being a college professor, or an actor, or lawyer (!), I wanted to play baseball professionally. I have proof. In a memory book that is now in my attic, "Thomas's School Years," I completed a checklist in second grade: "When I Grow Up I Want To Be—." I did not put Fireman, Cowboy, or Astronaut. I checked the "x" at "Baseball Player."

The sport runs deep in my family. We lived in suburban Philadelphia at the time and followed the Phillies. I practiced running like the speedy Larry Bowa (low to the ground) and aspired to be Major League Baseball's first left-handed shortstop.

My left-handedness, alas, banished me to left field. And by fourth grade, I was wearing glasses. Humid nights fogged up my vision, and try as I might to wipe the lenses on my double-knits, I could no longer see the ball. My baseball dreams ended.

But my fixation with stadiums has never died.

In one of my earliest memories, my dad did not let me join my older brothers in a late game at Connie Mack Stadium, revered home of the old Athletics and Phillies' "Whiz Kids." I threw a tantrum. Dad tried to console me by bringing home a pennant. I still have the pennant.

After my father's father died, back in the 1950s, dad's uncle took him to the Polo Grounds, out on Coogan's Bluff in upper Manhattan. The Giants played there, in an enormous horseshoe, with an outfield that only the great Willie Mays could cover. (The site is now public housing.) The Polo Grounds hailed from a different time, before stadiums were built for one sport—or their owners. But you know that.

After the Dodgers and Giants left New York, Brooklynites would say betrayed, MLB brought National League back baseball with the New York Metropolitans. But again, you know that, Mr. Sternberg; you hold season tickets at Shea.

Or excuse me, Citi Field.

We no longer name our ballparks after public servants, landmarks, or war veterans, like Philadelphia's old Vet. Sport has stripped away the veneer and we openly honor profits.

Which leads us to the Trop.

Back in the '80s a then-insecure (and now thriving) St. Petersburg desperately wanted a baseball team. Leaders leveled an African American neighborhood in the Gas Plant area, built a domed stadium, later expanded into Tropicana Field.

The ballpark cratered a community. They always do.

The tilted dome draws constant scorn from my friends back North. "Baseball should be played outdoors," they scoff.

These friends have never suffered through a Florida summer.

Nor do they know the blistered history. The first baseline of Tropicana Field runs under what used to be Third Avenue South in the old Gas Plant. The World's Longest Tile Mosaic (now concrete) ran by the James Weldon Johnson Library. Stores, home, churches, community—demolished for professional sports.

People ask, why is Tropicana Field empty? Strangely, they never consider the site's bad juju. The stadium holds a woeful history: Jim Crow segregation, followed by cynical "urban renewal." Like bad civic dentistry, the domed stadium caps off the Gas Plant site like a cracked filling over a rotten tooth.

And we all know the "sports=jobs" equation is just as rotten.

Last summer, my 20-year old son worked the Trop as a parking attendant. On paper, the wages looked good. Thirteen bucks an hour. Better than fast food. But the pay did not begin to cover food and rent.

Do the math. Fifteen games per month, with 4-hour shifts, at $13/hour comes to $780. Single rooms in St. Pete start at $600. Worse still, the scheduling makes it impossible to line up a stadium gig with other jobs. Anyone who claims baseball boosts the economy is delusional. Or lying.

Why should any municipality subsidize sports? For a team that splits a season between cities? These questions hit home for me. Last Summer, I made a pilgrimage to visit Coogan's Bluff. The banner from Connie Mack still hangs in my office.

I can name every starter, the outfield platoon (Mookie Wilson, Lenny Dykstra), pitching rotation (Doc Gooden, Sid Fernandez, Ron Darling, Bobby O) and bullpen (Jesse Orosco, Roger McDowell, an underrated Doug Sisk in long relief) for the 1986 Mets. My guess is you can, too.

I will never forget where I was in 2011, when Dave Wills and Andy Freed called Evan Longoria's shot over the left field wall, clinching a playoff berth in game 162. I was with my wife, in bed, listening to the call.

It was the second most thrilling game of my 57-year old baseball life. (You know the first—Game 6 of the Series, '86 Mets.)

Let's come back to the heart of our problem.

The most difficult part in any relationship is recognizing when love goes bad. When a partner cannot commit, cannot stay true, when the relationship grows abusive or one-sided, we tell our friends to leave.

And so it goes with stadium subsidies—or a split season.

This is no longer working, Stu. If you showed the city you really cared, this fan would give the Rays his heart and soul. Right now, I feel jilted and pathetic.

I will not support any politician who caves into a sucker's bargain. Never. Never ever (like Tay Tay sings). If you cannot love this city back, please, just walk away.

Thomas Hallock, lifelong baseball fan, is Professor of English and Florida Studies at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. His most recent book is A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst.

UPDATED 10/29/21 11:30 a.m. Updated to correct the spelling of Dave Wills' name.

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