Build It And They Will Come; Location, Location... Location?- by Ozona Kidd

In a city where 1 in 8 people are unemployed and about as many residential homes are in foreclosure, the Tampa Bay Rays have recently announced that they need a new place to play baseball.

Why? Because despite having the best team in the major league, they still can't fill up their stadium.

To be sure, this begs an even larger question: Why can't the best team in the league sell out their stadium?

Never mind the fact that ticket prices for Ray's games are up 30% over those from last year to an average of about $43 a seat. Not to mention the fact that it costs twenty bucks to park and another $20 for a few beers and a couple of hot dogs bringing the total cost of attending a game to a cool $250 for a family of 4.

In a city staring down both barrels of the meanest recession to hit the country in the past century, where the hotels and resorts are half empty because an ocean of black, lifeless sludge is about ready to wash up on our beaches, cost isn't a factor?

No, it's not the fact that it costs as much for a family of 4 to attend a baseball game as an average Walmart employee brings home in a week or the 98 home games in the Ray's regular season, it's the stadium, or at least that's the conclusion of the ABC Coalition (A Baseball Community Coalition).

Build it and they will come. That was the message that ABC Coalition member Craig Sher delivered to a recent meeting of Pinellas County commissioners. He started off his presentation half jokingly saying he was going to speak real loud, so they could hear him in downtown St. Petersburg. To say it would seem obvious that ABC Coalition is backed by "special interests" that stand to profit from building a new stadium for the Rays would be an understatement.

Sher told commissioners that if the Rays don't get a new stadium, they'll likely leave. He said Tropicana Field is outdated and it doesn't make any sense to remodel it. "Baseball is really important," he continued. "That we have a problem if we don't relocate the stadium sometime in the near future and that we as a community need to support the Rays whenever possible."

Indeed Mr. Sher, ask not what your Major League Baseball team can do for you; ask what you can do for your Major League Baseball Team.

"Build it and they will come."

If that line sounds familiar, that's because it is, and not because it was the recurring theme in the 1989 film Field of Dreams. It sounds familiar because it's the same bull shit that similar "special interests" used 25 years ago to build the original stadium, the Florida Suncoast Dome. The initiative succeeded in conning Tampa Bay area taxpayers into building a stadium under the auspices of luring a Major League Baseball team to St Pete.

How did it work out the last time we got talked into building a new stadium for a baseball team? The stadium sat empty for 12 years and now they're telling us the whole thing needs to be scrapped. Is there any reason to think it will be different this time? You be the judge, but hold on to your wallets Tampa tax payers.