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The Rays declined the massive public subsidies they had in place for a new ballpark in St. Petersburgh, but they haven’t abandoned the city or Pinellas County just yet. Which, to be frank, is a little odd, but it seems that current own Stu Sternberg wants to buy a bit more time, but not 30 years’ worth, while he figures out whatever’s next.
The Rays pitched rebuilding the Trop and renovating it for another decade of use past the current lease, which would come in at a much lower price tag for St. Pete and Pinellas, yes, but most importantly for the Rays, it’d also cost them less. The reception was not enthusiastic, which makes sense: public officials are furious at the Rays for backing out of the existing deal, and renovating the Trop doesn’t do what said deal was supposed to do in the first place. The reason the city and county were willing to fork over all of that public money is because it would allow the Trop to be razed, and all kinds of development to happen in the spot where it is. If the Rays are still playing at the Trop, none of that can happen.
Which is not to say that a deal won’t be reached, because none of these massive subsidies actually ever make sense and yet they continue to be handed over to teams, anyway. But for now, this is just a pitch from the Rays. One wonders if, should it be outright rejected by public officials, if that’ll truly be it for Sternberg as Rays owner.
Craig Calcaterra has already gone in-depth on this, so I’ll just nudge you over to his newsletter today (which happens to be a free edition, since it’s Thursday). Jackie Robinson’s military history was briefly scrubbed from the Department of Defense’s website, which means all of this is in the news, but Calcaterra points out that MLB’s own website has been doing plenty of its own washing away of diversity initiatives. He’s got screenshots of what the site used to look like and what it looks like as of right now. Not great!
When Billy Bean, senior vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion passed away last summer, it didn’t feel off-base to consider that MLB might just… not hire a replacement. What they ended up doing was promoting a couple of existing executives to roles that, combined, matched the work he was doing, with Michael Hill becoming senior vice president of on-field operations and workforce development, and April Brown to senior vice president of social responsibility and diversity, allaying those fears a bit. But now they’ve got a Diversity and Inclusion page that doesn’t have the word “diversity” on it anymore, so. Hm! Calcaterra also noted that MLB has yet to respond to him on this issue, which tracks, since they also didn’t say a thing about the Robinson story to anyone.
It’s all just a reminder that these guys will all go whichever way the wind blows. It’s important, in situations like this, to remember the immortal words first posted nearly 10 years ago now: “Is [pop star] a feminist? Is Mastercard a queer ally? Is this TV show my friend?”
The A’s are slated to head to Las Vegas after a few years playing in Sacramento — they even have patches on their jerseys they’ll wear in Sacramento that say Las Vegas on them, that’s how you know this is all real — but not everyone is buying it. Like Marcos Breton and Tom Phillip at The Sacramento Bee, who do not believe that the A’s actually have the finances they need to get a ballpark built, in large part because construction is supposed to begin soon and the team hasn’t shown anyone the money yet.
This team needs to find enough private money, greater than the estimated value of the team in Oakland, to build a Las Vegas stadium. And it needs to show that the first $100 million to gain access to some limited public financing in Nevada.
But so far, the Fisher family that owns the A’s hasn’t shown its proverbial cards. Las Vegas authorities have yet to publicly validate that the family has that level of skin in the game. And if stadium construction is to commence in Las Vegas soon, so that the team’s planned temporary stay in West Sacramento is only three years, a lot has to fall into place that so far hasn’t by all outward appearances.
Frankly, I’m still not buying the idea that the Las Vegas A’s will be anything but that — an idea — given Fisher is still trying to sell a small chunk of the team for an inflated price in order to have that $1 billion he needs to pay for his portion of the stadium. Will he get the financing he needs? Will his family actually hand over that money, or are they just saying, “sure, tell them we’ll do it so nothing gets held up,” and oh hey now construction is supposed to start real soon and the cash still isn’t there despite the time that bought? I guess we’ll see, but nothing is settled out in Vegas just yet.
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