Take the Rays, and it appears the citizens of St. Petersburg and the communities packed a million strong in the most densely populated county in the state, Pinellas, are saying just that. Take them, please. The door will hit one of the game's most dynamic, fun-to-watch young teams in the butt before the voters will approve the convertible stadium that owner Stuart Sternberg says he absolutely must have.
Hoping to lure the Chicago White Sox, whose bid for a new ballpark was being stonewalled by Cook County voters, St. Petersburg floated bonds for construction of a domed stadium in the late 1980s. The Sox used their Florida leverage to get their publicly funded ballpark.
The Florida Suncoast Dome sat there 20 years ago, looking like a partially collapsed souffle while the Mariners and Giants used it to blackmail their own voters and MLB awarded expansion franchises to Miami and Denver.
There is an almost laughable irony that the first tenant in a building located in the lightning capital of the world was an NHL expansion team named the Lightning. And that even Arena League football played in the next-named Thunderdome before the American League awarded a franchise to Tampa Bay in 1995. That made it 5 years without a major league team in a building that was starting to fall apart by the time the Devil Rays came into existence.
Major league baseball always has thrived in Florida. Babe Ruth trained - or not - in St. Pete, holding forth at the posh Vinoy. The Phillies have been in Clearwater 63 years. The Cardinals and Mets shared Al Lang Field on the bay in downtown St. Pete after the Yankees moved, first to Fort Lauderdale, then to George Steinbrenner's Tampa home base.
