Category: the sports-media complex

Tampa Bay Rays co-presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman waded back into the stadium wars late last week, and the Tampa Bay Times scrambled all its reportorial jets to cover it. For those who haven’t been following, the Times has three writers who’ve been working on the Rays’ stadium story: baseball beat reporter Marc Topkin, who is historically a mouthpiece for Rays leadership; sports columnist John Romano, who is more a “can’t we just find a solution here” guy; and St. Petersburg reporter Colleen Wright, who actually reports the news. All three were on display over the weekend, and they did a classic job of describing the elephant:

• Wright kicked things off on Friday by reporting on how Auld and Silverman went on a team-sponsored radio show Thursday night and again blamed St. Petersburg and Pinellas County officials for delaying their stadium financing votes from October to December following Hurricane Milton, which they said “effectively broke the deal.” City and county officials, in turn, were “expressing growing impatience” with Rays execs, wrote Wright, with County Commission chair Brian Scott, a strong supporter of the stadium deal, saying,  “If you can’t make a deal work with $600 million in public funding [Ed. Note: more like $1 billion actually], then you’ve got a business model that’s not sustainable. That’s not something that public dollars are going to fix.”
• Romano followed up Saturday evening with a column on how “Mayor Ken Welch and a handful of city council folk were just about the last allies the Rays had in the universe and now they’ve managed to tick them off, too.” And while “to a degree” the Rays ownership’s anger was justified, he wrote, because the county commission did delay their vote until new members came on board, those new members “realized their error” and decided they didn’t want to be blamed for “the bungling of a $6.5 billion redevelopment deal” and approved the funding anyway. This is Rays owner Stu Sternberg’s last chance to get a stadium in the Tampa Bay area, Romano argued, and if that doesn’t happen, either 1) Sternberg will move the team, 2) Sternberg will sell the team to someone who moves it, or 3) Sternberg will sell the team to someone who gets a new stadium built locally. (The idea that maybe the Rays don’t actually need a new stadium, or at least a new stadium that costs $1.3 billion plus whatever the Trump steel tariff surcharge will be, seems not to have crossed Romano’s mind, despite his writing that it’s likely “the team will not see huge profits upon the opening of a new stadium” because nobody really wants to go see Rays games.)
• A few hours later, Topkin chimed in by turning over all his column inches to Silverman, who said “we have four years to figure this out” and “we’ve always wanted to be here” and “we’re going to try to figure it out,” but that Rays execs are still deciding whether to go ahead with the new stadium deal by March 31, after which it turns into a pumpkin and everyone goes back to square one.

It was all really quite the case study in the breadth of U.S. newspaper coverage, running the gamut from straight-up team boosterism to even-handed reporting. And even more than that, it’s a reminder of how daily news outlets seldom convey a perspective that isn’t held by someone in a position of power: We have Topkin telling us how Rays execs see the stadium fiasco, columnist Romano expressing how Mayor Welch and other pro-stadium councilmembers see it, and Wright reporting on the perspective of city and county officials as a whole. The idea of consulting economists or budget experts, or just regular local residents who still haven’t been asked what they think of the deal, is crazy talk — who even are those guys?

Meanwhile, none of this gets us any closer to understand whether Sternberg and Friends are truly set to walk away from a $1 billion check because they just realized stadiums are expensive or Florida gets hit by hurricanes or something, or if they’re waiting to see if St. Pete officials will sweeten the deal if they hold out until March 31. That sure doesn’t sound likely given the latest statements by local elected officials — don’t forget, even Welch indicated two weeks ago that he’s ready to walk away from the stadium deal if Sternberg doesn’t live up to his end of things — but we’ll see. The power of “let’s just get things done” is powerful, especially when it’s posed as the sensible middle.

Finally some actual news about the Tampa Bay Rays stadium roof situation, courtesy of the St. Pete Catalyst, one of those nonprofit news sites springing up that could no doubt use your subscription money if you have some burning a hole in your pocket for other reasons. The Catalyst got hold of emails (it didn’t say, whether via a public records request or leaks) revealing that city building officials met with representatives of roof construction firm Dunn Lightweight the day after Hurricane Milton tore the roof off of Tropicana Field, and that company was at least initially ready to take a shot at having the roof replaced by Opening Day 2025:

In a Friday, Oct. 11 email sent after visiting the site, Javier Rattia, partner director for Dunn Lightweight, noted that his firm was under a “very tight schedule” to dismantle and replace Tropicana Field’s roof in time for the 2025 season.

“We will airfreight some of the materials and use most of our stock to achieve this monumental task,” Rattia wrote.

The next day, Dunn signed an agreement with the city to just dismantle and remove the existing roof, at a cost not to exceed $548,534. Nine days later, however, the city hired Global Rope Access to provide seven “rope technicians” to remove the roof at a cost of $416,353. (The Catalyst didn’t attempt to explain the discrepancy; I’ve reached out to Dunn and GRA to try to clarify.)

All this could either mean 1) St. Pete is giving up on trying to replace the roof, despite Dunn’s willingness to give it a go, 2) St. Pete is just working on cleaning up the debris for now while it evaluates the possibility of repair, or 3) something else, probably, this is one of the hazards of writing articles based entirely on email records. But it definitely tracks with the idea that nobody has yet figured out if the stadium roof is reparable, what it would cost, or how long it would take, though presumably Rays and city officials are working on that.

Speaking of which, somebody asked MLB commissioner Rob Manfred during World Series batting practice what he thought the timeline was, and he came up with a date:

“I think by Christmas they gotta have a pretty good plan in place, and there’s a lot to that.”…

“They’re still in the damage assessment mode,” Manfred said. “That needs to get done and obviously, it’s not just the roof, there was damage internally as well. Won’t know exactly what’s going to happen until they complete that process. … It’s just a guess as to how long it’s going to be.”

That’s hardly definitive, even before Manfred got to “just a guess”: What does that even mean to “have a pretty good plan in place”? Do Rays execs have to know for sure where they’ll be playing at the start of 2025, or just have various contingencies in place? When to MLB’s schedule makers need to know, so they can adjust game and travel times if necessary? Quick, somebody ask Manfred some followups — nope, he’s already on to the next thing:

“We can make it work in a minor-league park,” Manfred said. “I think there’s probably some flexibility in terms of what we do with the big-league schedule.”

Probably! This is not really helpful at all, even if it did get the Athletic some quotes to justify an article to lure you behind the New York Times’ paywall. Somebody get the St. Pete Catalyst (or Hell Gate, they’re in town already) a World Series press pass already so we can get some actual damn answers.