After news broke that the Tampa Bay Rays reached an agreement with St. Petersburg mayor Rick Kriseman that will allow them to search for new stadium sites, Rays owner Stuart Sternberg offered a frank assessment about the future of the baseball team.
The Rays owner insisted that Tampa Bay remains a strong market for baseball, but warned that without a new stadium deal, the future of the team is uncertain.
“I’m not taking this team out of the area,” Sternberg said Tuesday at the Winter Meetings in San Diego. “But that’s me, and the chances of me owning this team in 2023 if we don’t have a new stadium are probably nil. Somebody else will take it and move it. It’s not a threat, it’s just the reality.”
Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times tweeted the following quotes from Sternberg.
“I think baseball can still flourish down here and I’m looking for the oppotunity to make that happen,” Sternberg said (via Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times). “We need to get the building and the location pinpoint perfect for that to happen.”
The team has played since its inception in Pinellas County at what now is called Tropicana Field. The agreement, slated for a vote Thursday by the St. Petersburg City Council, would allow the Rays to evaluate sites on the east side of the bay in Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located.
The Rays averaged a major league-worst attendance of 17,857 in 2014.
