Milwaukee’s Tropicana Field takeover should convince MLB to leave Tampa behind

I wanted to give Tampa Bay Rays fans the benefit of the doubt, I really did. Sure, Tropicana Field has historically been one of the most tepid home atmospheres in baseball, but it’s in a notoriously awful location in St. Petersburg, and this franchise has only had a pulse since Barack Obama’s first term in office. Maybe they just needed a bit more time to put down roots? Maybe a young, dynamic team running roughshod through the American League en route to just their second-ever pennant would be the thing to finally turn Tampa into a baseball town?

But let the record show that Monday, Oct. 26, is when all the excuses officially died. Complain about the commute all you want — it can’t explain away the fact that, while hosting just your third World Series game in franchise history, you allowed Milwaukee Brewers fans to take over the Trop.

Just listen to that pop on Christian Yelich’s RBI single in the top of the third inning of Game 3. It’s not quite a home game at American Family Field, but it’s also not all that far off — you could convince me that crowd was 50 percent Brewers fans, or at the very least 60-40. Does that seem like a fan base that deserves $800 million in public funding for a sparkling new stadium?

A shiny new ballpark won’t suddenly turn Tampa into a baseball town

There are plenty of passionate Rays fans out there, and I don’t mean to erase them. There just aren’t enough to sustain a Major League fan base. How else do you explain such an embarrassing takeover on a night that should be building a whole new generation of fans? The Rays have been consistently competitive for nearly a decade now, and this team was a legitimate title contender all year long while playing an engaging brand of baseball.

And yet, outside of a decent atmosphere for Game 1 of the ALDS against the hated New York Yankees, the Trop has once again failed to deliver. I know that it’s a pain to get there for plenty of fans around the Tampa Bay area, and I know it’s not exactly the most pleasant place to take in a game. But those are excuses for May, not October. If you’re not going to show up now, with your team on the precipice of doing something your city has never seen, when exactly will you show up?

More to the point, why will things magically be different in a new stadium? I get that it will actually be in Tampa proper, right across from where the Bucs play at Raymond James Stadium. I’m just skeptical that fans who aren’t willing to bear some inconvenience for their team’s first World Series game in nearly 20 years will suddenly decide to do so when it’s a bit easier of a drive. And really, if that’s a dealbreaker, why shouldn’t any one of several other baseball-hungry cities get a shot to prove they can support an MLB team?

MLB should be thinking relocation, not expansion

With stadium quagmires in both Tampa and Las Vegas now seemingly settled, Rob Manfred has turned his sights toward expansion, hoping to add one West Coast team and one East Coast team before he retires from his role as commissioner in January of 2029. But in both cases, it feels like monied interests winning out over what’s actually good for the game.

Does it feel like the big-league player pool can support a move from 30 to 32 teams, when most of the league has a hard time sustaining functional pitching staffs over the course of a 162-game season? Does it feel like either Tampa or Vegas has established a healthy baseball culture? The former is going on three decades of failing to show up when it matters, while the latter got its relationship with the A’s started by fighting the public funding of a new stadium tooth and nail (and understandably so).

You can understand why Manfred wants to remain invested in warm-weather markets, given the country’s demographic trends. At a certain point, though, the game is better served by being where it’s actually wanted, where fans will create atmospheres that build excitement around baseball that feels infectious. Tampa had a chance to prove it was more than just a home away from home for snowbirds, and it turned into Milwaukee south anyway.