The Tampa Bay area was shaken up on Friday with the stunning announcement that Joe Maddon was exploiting an opt-out provision in his contract to bolt the Rays and take his chances on the free market. Though Rays team president Matt Silverman emphasized that management's financial offers for a new contract were generous, it's apparent in Maddon's subsequent comments that he felt he was being low-balled, and aspires to make at least double his current $2 million salary, and probably will.
So not only does Rays management now need to find a new skipper, but one would hope that with the 2014 official MLB season just days away from ending, we might finally be hearing something about the Rays making a deal with the Kriseman administration to begin talks about a possible stadium in Tampa.
Unless the Rays don't really have the desire any longer to pursue such opportunities across the Howard Frankland.
Why do I say that? Well, let's start with the piece of property that much of official Tampa establishment had chosen as their promised land, Channelside. For years this has been teased out as the best possible location for a Rays park (more so than Westshore, Tampa Park Apartments in Ybor or the Florida State Fairgrounds, for example).
But now that uber-developer Jeff Vinik has invested big-time in Channelside's failed shopping complex with the 24-acres around it to create a "vibrant urban district", baseball doesn't seem to be a natural fit.
On Friday the New York Daily News' Bill Madden reported that Rays owner Stu Sternberg has had discussions about the only city in North America that actively is working to acquire a Major League Baseball franchise, Montreal, which lost its beloved Expos to Washington D.C. a decade ago.
Rays owner Stuart Sternberg has been frustrated in his efforts to get out of Tropicana Field in St. Pete and move to a new stadium in Tampa, but there is growing belief that the economically depressed Tampa Bay area won’t support the Rays no matter where they play. And according to sources, Sternberg has had discussions with wealthy Wall Street associates about moving the Rays to Montreal, which has been without a major-league franchise since the Expos were transferred to Washington in 2005. As one major-league official put it to me Friday: “Say what you will about Montreal, but the Expos drew well over two million fans four times there in their heyday, while the Rays did that only once, their first year.
This report has been derided in some quarters, understandably so, since spreading "rumors" about a team looking at another city is the tried and true tactic that sports owners have used for decades. The problem for the Rays in the past few years is that the cities that used to be excited about acquiring a baseball franchise — Portland, Nashville, Charlotte — just really don't have the desire (or the money) to do so.
But Montreal is hungry, and even if it is just for leverage purposes, why wouldn't Sternberg consider talking to folks there? The team remains viable even with its low payroll because of the smarts in the front office, but years of having the worst attendance in baseball have to wear on the organization, as appeared to be the case with Maddon.
In other news…
Bill Clinton joined Charlie Crist in East Tampa yesterday…earlier in the day Annette Taddeo made the rounds at early voting sites and churches in Tampa and St. Pete.
The owner of a winery in Plant City who has filed an ethics complaint against Hillsborough County Commisioner Al Higginbotham disputes what the lawmaker says happened regarding the Keel and Curley Winery.
And do you know the story about Rick Scott's refusal to release private emails that appear on the surface to be a major violation of Florida Sunshine Laws?
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2014.
