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This week, we travel back in time 25 years to September 26, 1983, to try and warn the people of Pinellas County about the folly of building a stadium in St. Petersburg …
Greetings,
I am from the year 2008 and you should heed what I say. Where I come from, Vice President Bush’s oldest son has been president for the last seven years, gasoline hovers near $4 a gallon, and football no longer comes to mind when someone mentions O.J. Simpson. Ignore my warnings at your own peril!
I would like to take this unique time-traveling opportunity to ask -- or if that is not a strong enough sentiment -- beg you not to build a baseball stadium in St. Petersburg. There’s a misguided belief in your time that by one-upping Tampa, you’ll somehow gain an edge in the quest to land a Major League Baseball franchise. Please think again.
In years to come, teams such as the Rangers, Twins, Mariners, White Sox and Giants will all tease you with the allure of relocating to St. Petersburg as leverage to get new stadiums or favorable leases back in their own cities. You will be told outright by the commissioner and various owners not to build a stadium, but you will ignore their warnings. Fools! The financial consequences will be felt for decades to come by the citizens of your county.
Expansion won’t even come around until 1991, and at that point, Miami and Denver will be the cities to land teams. Denver’s team will play in Mile High Stadium until their state-of-the-art stadium is built. Miami’s team will be forced to play in an unpopular, multi-purpose stadium more suitable for football. Around here, our version will be in St. Pete and it will be called Tropicana Field.
The coming years will see the end of multi-purpose stadiums and a renaissance of “retro stadiums” that incorporate elements of classic ballparks with modern amenities. Your barbaric, traditional domed stadiums are a thing of the past as well. Twenty-five years in the future, stadiums will be built with retractable roofs that can open and close in a matter of minutes. The dome you hope to build will be like Chevy Chase and the VCR: obsolete by the end of the century.
What’s that, you say? This area's hunger for baseball will triumph over any odds? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it seems the hunger you speak of was highly overrated. It turns out that what this area loves is Spring Training, and that most of the transplants from the Northeast and Midwest will be unwilling to support the local team.
The group trying to attract an expansion franchise to the Tampa Bay area will tout a season-ticket waiting list of over 27,000 people. The majority of games, however, attract only half that number.
Reasons for refusing to attend games are numerous. The drive is too far. The economy stinks. This thing we call global warming. If excuses were wins, this area would be the equivalent of the 1927 Yankees.
The bottom line is that you should never build the stadium where you do. Don’t get me wrong, downtown St. Petersburg will be on the upswing for years and put downtown Tampa to shame. The problem, however, is that the location of the stadium will not be easily accessible to the majority of people in the greater Tampa Bay area.
Sprawl will cause this community to grow in leaps and bounds that should have been predicted in your day. The lack of mass transit in this area, coupled with congested roads, will make the prospect of driving to St. Pete in rush-hour traffic less appealing than a striking air traffic controller to Ronald Reagan. Sorry, too soon?
In the year 2008, all of the excuses will be stripped. We finally will have a winner – a playoff team -- that makes us all proud. This season will be the greatest in team history. Just one year after finishing with the worst record in baseball, our team will be on pace to finish with at least 30 more wins. Still, attendance has lagged during the playoff run and we will be mocked by the rest of America. It has never been more obvious that baseball will never succeed in St. Petersburg, no matter how well the team plays on the field.
It is very possible that the Tampa Bay area can support baseball, given a stadium in a central location accessible to all the people of Polk, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Because of your decisions, however, the chance of that happening, or of baseball having long-term viability in this market, will dwindle faster than Gary Hart’s presidential prospects. Trust me on that one, you’ll see.
As I bid you farewell, I ask that you do what’s right. Forget about baseball and worry about the more pressing issues of the day. Leave the quest for a Major League franchise to the people of Tampa. They’ll figure it out and probably get it right, too. Oh, and one more thing. In a few months, a boy with a golden arm named Scott Kazmir will be born in Houston, Texas. On behalf of the Tampa Bay area, please send his mother and father our most sincere thanks.
The date March 31, 1998, should always hold special significance to Tampa Bay baseball fans. After two decades of wishing and hoping for a major league team, ten years ago this week the Tampa Bay Devil Rays finally took to the field against the Detroit Tigers.
In front of a packed house at Tropicana Field, the first game in Devil Rays history didn't exactly qualify as a storybook beginning. Detroit’s four-run second inning off $35 million pitcher Wilson Alvarez soon turned into an 11-0 deficit after five innings, and the historic day ended on a dismal note with the Tigers winning 11-6.
The following day, April 1, Detroit became an April Fool’s Day victim as the Devil Rays recorded the first victory in team history. With nearly 15,000 fewer fans in attendance than on Opening Day, the Devil Rays unveiled their prized acquisition Rolando Arrojo, a defector from Havana, Cuba, who signed a free agent contract with Tampa Bay.
The starting pitcher won 160 games in ten seasons on the Cuban National Team and earned a gold medal as a member of the 1992 Olympic team. At one point during his baseball career in Cuba, Arrojo made as little as $11 per month. In 1997, Arrojo signed his first major league contract for $7 million.
The pitcher, who after the game admitted to being "anxious and excited," surrendered three runs in the first inning. Tony Clark and Tampa native Luis Gonzalez hit back-to-back doubles to spark the inning for Detroit. Following a walked batter, Arrojo rallied by striking out the last two hitters of the inning to keep the score a respectable 3-0.
Tampa Bay responded with a two-run first inning, which featured doubles by Wade Boggs and Fred McGriff. Boggs and McGriff, products of Plant and Jefferson high schools in Tampa, were brought in by the Devil Rays to add some local flavor to the expansion franchise. Outstanding players in their own right, the two would contribute offensive and defensive production, as well as name recognition, throughout their stints with the Devil Rays.
Tampa Bay took the lead in the fourth, breaking out with a four-run inning. John Flaherty singled with one out, and then advanced to third base on an opposite field single by Rich Butler. Kevin Stocker, who tripled on his first at-bat in the second inning, came to the plate with runners on first and third with one out.
The shortstop, whose trade to Tampa Bay in 1997 for outfielder Bobby Abreu would prove to be one of the most debated and maligned in franchise history, nevertheless came through in this situation, lining a single to left to even up the score at 3-3.
Leadoff hitter Quinton McCracken followed Stocker's hit with a single of his own to load the bases. Miguel Cairo's ground ball to short forced McCracken at second, but a hustling Cairo beat the throw to first, allowing Butler to score and give Tampa Bay a 4-3 lead.
A Wade Boggs single then drove in Stocker from third and forced Tigers' starter Brian Moehler out of the game. McGriff knocked in his second run of the day to complete the scoring for the Devil Rays, who ended the fourth with a 6-3 lead.
Tampa Bay tacked on another run in the sixth to make the score 7-4, and after 107 pitches thrown through six innings of work, Arrojo was pulled from his first major league start. What followed would foreshadow the following decade of Tampa Bay baseball -- inconsistent pitching by the bullpen.
Over the following two innings, Detroit would put seven of its following nine batters on base. Reliever Ramon Tatis alone allowed four of the five hitters he faced to reach. Despite the Detroit surge, however, the Devil Rays allowed only two runners to score and held a fragile 7-6 lead. Rich Butler gave his team some breathing room with a home run – the first of his major league career -- to make the score 8-6 after seven frames. Detroit answered back in the eighth by scoring a run off Albie Lopez, who had walked the first two batters of the inning.
Jim Mecir, who would go on to be the bullpen workhorse throughout the 1998 season, set down the side without allowing any more damage. Tampa Bay put an end to the suspense by batting around in the home half of the eighth inning.
Fred McGriff, who finished the game with 4 runs batted in, provided a two-run single and Dave Martinez singled in a run to increased Tampa Bay's lead to 11-7. The Tigers tacked on a run in the ninth off closer Roberto Hernandez to provide one last dose of drama, but the Devil Rays would hold on for an 11-8 victory.
In many ways, the first win in team history was as memorable as the first game played just a day prior. The Devil Rays cranked out a season-high 18 hits, batted around the lineup twice (in the 4th and 8th innings), and Rolando Arrojo earned the victory in his major league debut.
Arrojo would go on to win 14 games in 1998, earn a selection as the team's first ever All Star representative, and finish second in the American League Rookie of the Year balloting. Although Tampa Bay only won 62 more times during that inaugural season, the first win certainly proved the sweetest for both Arrojo and the Devil Rays.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ plans to build a new, $450 million stadium in downtown St. Petersburg should come as no surprise to longtime residents of the area.
Designing baseball stadiums and then debating suitable locations for them is as much a local pastime as the game itself. Only twenty-five years ago this month, rival groups representing Pinellas and Hillsborough counties pitched their designs for stadiums that would serve as home for a to-be-determined team.
On January 26, 1983, the city of St. Petersburg and the Pinellas Sports Authority held a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony at the corner of 16th Street and Third Avenue South. The 66-acre site, known as the Gas Plant, eventually would be developed into Tropicana Field. But on that day, the PSA announced the facility would be called Pinellas Suncoast Stadium. An artist’s design of that stadium evokes the current model being trumpeted by Rays management.
Bill Bunker, executive director of the PSA, touted the stadium’s tent-like covering as being more economical than a traditional dome. And much like the current plan that features a lightweight synthetic polymer sail, it would protect fans from the rain but not the heat.
Earlier that week in 1983, the Tampa Bay Baseball Group unveiled their design for a 46,000-seat stadium on the site of Al Lopez Field next to Tampa Stadium. Like the stadium design on the other side of the Bay, the Baseball Group also envisioned a fabric-covered – but not domed – stadium.
Within six months, however, both groups would alter their plans and opt for covered stadiums. The Baseball Group’s design called for a Teflon roof that would reflect solar heat while relying on open sides for ventilation. The Pinellas group opted for a fully-covered, air-conditioned facility. The debate currently going on in St. Petersburg over open-air versus domed stadiums is clearly nothing new.
So while concepts that were quickly discarded two decades ago are being recycled today, we should fully expect to see the Rays’ current plans in another 25 years – much like the stadium plans of January 1983 – located on the scrap heap of history.
