ST. PETERSBURG — This is a great day for baseball fans in Tampa Bay. Presumably. Well, possibly. Okay, hopefully.
Major League Baseball’s stunning rejection of the sister city plan is a godsend for fans who abhorred the idea of sharing the Rays with Montreal, and it is complete vindication for everyone who insisted the concept resided somewhere between sinister and ridiculous.
Now that the plan has been obliterated, there will be no dual stadiums. No summer farewells. No French broadcasts. No alternating postseason sites.
Also, it should be said, no place for Wander Franco to hang his hat in 2028.
That should be an exhilarating, yet sobering, thought. Tampa Bay has been cut loose from the burning plane, but we’re still in desperate need of a parachute. A very, very expensive parachute.
While the marketplace is forever rid of an unpopular plan, it is now left with no plan at all. That could be a necessary first step toward something wonderful, but it comes with risks, too.
That’s what happens when a crucial plot line is overlooked. The opposition to the Montreal idea fixated on the perception of Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg as some comic book villain. If it weren’t for Sternberg — the story goes — then we’d all be happily singing during future seventh-inning stretches.
Except, that’s not true. This market still has a serious attendance problem. Which means we have a stadium problem. Which means we have a money problem.
