You know me. I love outside the box thinking. So it should come as no surprise that I’m in favor of the Tampa Bay Rays dramatic plan to become a two city team wherein they’d play half their games in Tampa and the other half in Montreal, the former home of the Expos. The shocking proposal, which MLB has given the go ahead for Tampa to explore, makes sense to some degree. Attendance figures have been dwindling for the Rays to the point where the Tampa/St. Petersburg area no longer seems like a viable destination for a professional baseball team. Meanwhile Montreal has been clamoring for a team ever since the Expos ditched them in 2005 to become the Washington Nationals.
As shocking as this proposal is there is some historical precedent for it as teams have played in multiple cities before. Stadium renovations or natural disasters have necessitated temporary relocations. But a permanent two city solution? That seems extreme, even in a sport where the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim exist purely for marketing purposes. Weirdness aside, the question remains: could this radical proposal work? Well, the devil is in the details. How would the split schedule work? Would Tampa get the early season games and Montreal the late season games, to work around the cold early season weather in the North and the propensity for rain in the South later on, negating the need for more expensive dome stadiums to be built? Who would get to host playoff games?! And most importantly, what about the human cost? Would players need to buy homes in two cities?! How would fans react if they know that they’ll only have their favorite players around for half the time? Instead of boosting interest by creating more demand for fewer games would there be even less interest, with fans figuring that there’s no point in engaging a product that is just going to be leaving soon anyway?
Those are all valid concerns but despite all of those reasons I’m still a fan of the idea anyway. It’s bold. It’s unique. And quite frankly there isn’t much alternative. Baseball in South Florida is failing as it is. The Marlins may be even worse off than the Rays after their latest tear down. At least the Rays have an exiting young nucleus and stacked farm system. If any franchise can pull off a magic trick and excite two separate fan bases it may very well be the one that has future phenom Wander Franco in the fold.
Of course, none of this matters. This likely isn’t even a real idea. More likely just a ruse to pressure the politicians in Tampa Bay to pony up for a new stadium there. But it should be a real idea. Thanks to Climate Change the idea of playing in two cities has real merit. For instance, franchises on the East Coast may find their stadiums under water in the near future, their fan bases displaced. Might they consider relocating to more than one place as well, more so out of necessity than pure choice? Could the New York Yankees move to Cooperstown, New York? The most storied franchise in the sport taking up residence in the most historic place. Could the Boston Red Sox rename themselves the New England Red Sox, following in the Patriots footsteps, while they relocate to several locations throughout Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts? Would new stadiums pop up in growing cities like Nashville, Austin, San Antonio, Charlotte, Portland, etc.? Or smaller towns that already play host to minor league teams? Could West Coast teams play some of their games in their spring training homes in Arizona? Or in foreign places like Mexico City and London, where exhibition and regular season games are already being played?
Only time will tell but for right now the timing is telling. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire and clearly something is amiss. If not now then certainly in the near future the idea of a two city team could resurface in baseball or perhaps another sport. For the time for thinking outside the box is firmly upon us. There’s no going back now.
Is a two city franchise the Greatest Idea Ever?
