This day works. Just ask the man in the tan sports jacket walking around the infield.
This day works, although so many days of baseball do not. This day works, although individual ticket sales are down, and season ticket sales are down, and sponsorship sales are down. This day works, although much of his team is starting over in a market that seems to have no patience for it.
This is Opening Day, after all.
This is the day the game takes over again.
Stu Sternberg walks around the infield of Tropicana Field briskly. It has been a busy off-season for his baseball team, what with a new president and a new general manager and a new manager and a lot of new players. Still, when it comes to the Rays, one debate seems to be eternal. With the Rays, the shadow of a proposed stadium is always cast across this one. With this, the debate is never far away.
Sternberg stops outside of the dugout, and he glances up at the banners in the rafters. And here we are again. There seems to be no pause in the conversation. The City Council is off having a workshop. The commissioner’s office is rattling the cage about Montreal. Even with baseball in the distance, we all talk about a stadium.
All the time.
“If I don’t have an inkling as to how it turns out, and I don’t, no one does,’’ Sternberg said. “I’m going to do my damnedest, and as an optimist, I think we’re going to get something done here. This isn’t about Stu Sternberg and the City Council or Stu Sternberg and the Rays and the user agreement. It’s about Major League Baseball and 29 other owners and the commissioner and the players association and the agents and the players and the game of baseball. Being last and last and last and last and last and last in attendance only goes on for so long. I’m the biggest advocate for getting something done. But I don’t want to be the only advocate.’’
Longtime fans of the Rays will find familiarity to Sternberg’s argument. He’s made it on other Opening Days.
If you were checking Sternberg’s temperature, however, he still seems patient and calm. That is something, at least. It sounds as if there are still verses to hear in this discussion.
“We have great TV ratings,’’ Sternberg said. “I’m glad we’ve picked up the ratings for the City Council meeting. I’m an extraordinarily patient person. I’m demanding at times. But if I can be patient with this, I’d like to think our fans could be patient. I’m doing everything I can to make sure this team stays in the Tampa Bay region for the next 50-100 years.
“I get exasperated because it makes it more difficult to get done on the field what we I’d like to get done. And what I think the franchise has earned, the employees have earned and the fans have earned. Not just scrimp and save and trade guys off. To spend a little money willy nilly, which we don’t get to do ever. We probably have the lowest, or the second-lowest, payroll in baseball. At 70 million, that’s a level that’s uncomfortable. It puts us squarely in the red again.’’
Sternberg maintains that if his team could get to a stadium where the attendance would rise to, say, the middle of the pack, then the payroll would do the same.
Sternberg said he wasn’t looking to negotiate further during the season, but he said “my door is always open. If you have something to show me, I’ll look.’’ Still, he didn’t sound as if he expected it. “If they had all of December, all of January, all of February, all of March and the early part of April, why would something come up now?’’
In the meantime, the Rays sold out their 10th straight opener Tuesday. What would be better than a day Sternberg said was “about endless possibilities.’’
In the 81 games to go? Who knows?
Asked why ticket sales were down, Sternberg shrugged.
“The finish,’’ he said. “We didn’t make the playoffs. We didn’t win 90 games. When you don’t win 90 games every year, people have a tough time going out to baseball. We’ve raised the bar. Joe (Maddon) not being here. Zobrist (second baseman Ben) not being here. If you didn’t buy the tickets last year or the year before, there wasn’t a reason to buy them.’’
