Rays have explored becoming 2 city team (with Montreal) (upd: rejected by MLB)

[BKIslandersFan]

Hartford's not set up for MLB.....and with the recent realignment of 40 clubs at the minor league level, where does that place the Yard Goats?

Hartford not getting the Rays, but Yard Goats are not even top 100,000,000 reason why.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

Hartford not getting the Rays, but Yard Goats are not even top 100,000,000 reason why.

uh, and apparently the Islanders must care nothing about Bridgeport, then, BK, how come the Islanders have owned that market since 2009, to the point now where they outright own and directed the organization to rebrand it after 21 seasons, while they battled for years to replace the monstrosity that was Nassau Coliseum

might as well rebuild the New Haven Coliseum

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Unlikely to happen but I feel that would be neat to see Tampa Bay relocate to Hartford and rebrand as the Whalers in MLB.

Would easily fit into the AL East picture as well.

For the love of God, Hartford is not a pro sports town. Period.

4th most populated in CT
8th most populated in New England

Rapidly declining pop with no downtown appeal and no money.

Smack dab in the middle of the 2 most passionate and biggest sports towns in the country.

No pro team will poach fans from the NY and Boston teams. CT does not have its own pro identity, the state splits between NY and Boston fandom going back generations.

 

[summer tooth]

It kind of sounds like they will just eventually buy the team and bring back the Expos or rebrand in Montreal. Doesn't seem like a name such as X-Rays would work and the two locations are too far apart.

 

[Bjorn Le]

It kind of sounds like they will just eventually buy the team and bring back the Expos or rebrand in Montreal. Doesn't seem like a name such as X-Rays would work and the two locations are too far apart.

That has been obvious from the beginning. It's a last ditch leverage attempt to get a new stadium built while giving the Montreal group a public piece of evidence to support their negotiations with the Montreal and provincial governments.

 

[Centrum Hockey]

It kind of sounds like they will just eventually buy the team and bring back the Expos or rebrand in Montreal. Doesn't seem like a name such as X-Rays would work and the two locations are too far apart.

A new Expos team will probably own the trademarks to the expos with the history and records remaining in Washington similar to Winnipeg in the NHL.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

For the love of God, Hartford is not a pro sports town. Period.

4th most populated in CT
8th most populated in New England

Rapidly declining pop with no downtown appeal and no money.

Smack dab in the middle of the 2 most passionate and biggest sports towns in the country.

No pro team will poach fans from the NY and Boston teams. CT does not have its own pro identity, the state splits between NY and Boston fandom going back generations.

When you're talking about Hartford you have to include the metro area because the city proper is both too small and too shitty.

I agree with your larger point though: Hartford doesn't have what it takes to support a major league sports team anymore, for a variety of reasons.




EDIT: and while I'm here, f*** I-84. That has nothing to do with the conversation but I don't care.

 

[These Are The Days]

Sternberg is stupid as shit. No one in Tampa wants this idea, will support it or build a ballpark for a team they're gonna have half the time. Just build a damn open air stadium already and be done with it. Half the games are at 7pm when it isn't hot and it doesn't rain every single night either.


Do it in Tampa too. St Pete does not have the population or business backing to support the Rays. This has been obvious for over 10 years

 

[Big McLargehuge]

When you're talking about Hartford you have to include the metro area because the city proper is both too small and too shitty.

I agree with your larger point though: Hartford doesn't have what it takes to support a major league sports team anymore, for a variety of reasons.




EDIT: and while I'm here, f*** I-84. That has nothing to do with the conversation but I don't care.

City size is an inherently flawed metric, especially in the US. Hartford itself covers <18 square miles, which is miniscule for a city. That's less than half as much land as the San Franciscos, Pittsburghs, Buffalos, Bostons, etc. of the country that themselves cover 1/5 as much land as a Chicago or Dallas (who themselves cover a fraction as much as the Jacksonvilles and Houstons that just annexed everything around them).

Either way, Hartford's location smack dab between NYC and Boston matters more than Hartford's population. Hartford just can't compete with New York and Boston simultaneously, which puts them inherently behind smaller population centers who would own the market. I'd love few things more than a Whalers revival like the Jets got, but there's a list of reasons why Winnipeg got a second chance while Hartford gets dusted off to be used as a pawn by real estate developers and/or owners looking to dial up the heat on getting a new arena built every few years.

For baseball I think that issue is amplified far more than it is in hockey. The fans who rooted for the Whale and would tearfully root for them again probably have multiple generations of Yankees/Red Sox/Mets/whatever fandom in their households that'd be much harder to shake. Hell, I'm a Pirates fan who does nothing but bitch about the Pirates while living 5 minutes from Dodger Stadium...and I'd rather simply not watch baseball than feel nauseous about being disloyal to an organization that has never done anything to earn that kind of loyalty. Now remember that the Yankees and Red Sox actually try to win things and occasionally to frequently do and just imagine how difficult of a time Hartford would have trying to compete with them.

Whatever issues Montreal has as a market, and it has plenty, are greatly reduced by its size and lack of direct competition. Still have to grow a fan base and nothing grows a fan base better than sustained success, but those are both massive positives.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Sternberg is stupid as shit. No one in Tampa wants this idea, will support it or build a ballpark for a team they're gonna have half the time. Just build a damn open air stadium already and be done with it. Half the games are at 7pm when it isn't hot and it doesn't rain every single night either.


Do it in Tampa too. St Pete does not have the population or business backing to support the Rays. This has been obvious for over 10 years

Say what? Did the Tampa/St. Pete area somehow get teleported away from the rest of the state of Florida without my knowing?

 

[Big McLargehuge]

Say what? Did the Tampa/St. Pete area somehow get teleported away from the rest of the state of Florida without my knowing?

It's not like the Lightning got their name randomly. Just thinking about how many doubleheaders would be required to get through the summer makes me tired. Just checking the weather for tonight quickly...at 7pm 82 with a 55% chance of thunderstorms. Have fun selling advance tickets when there's a 50/50 chance of a thunderstorm on any given day for the bulk of the Major League season.

The lowest temperature on the 10 day forecast is also 75 and the average low is above 75 for 4 months of the season...so it's not like it gets chilly when the sun goes down like most other places. You're not going to get me to go to many daytime Dodgers games, but night games are downright pleasant and cool. Hot and muggy night games? I'll pass. For comparison's sake, the daily low of Tampa is higher than LA's mean temperature in August...for four consecutive months of the MLB schedule.

Hell, ignore the whole thunderstorm issue and you're still talking about a place that gets nearly twice as much rain as Seattle does...but unlike Seattle that precipitation is heaviest during baseball season rather than the off-season.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

It's not like the Lightning got their name randomly. Just thinking about how many doubleheaders would be required to get through the summer makes me tired. Just checking the weather for tonight quickly...at 7pm 82 with a 55% chance of thunderstorms. Have fun selling advance tickets when there's a 50/50 chance of a thunderstorm on any given day for the bulk of the Major League season.

The lowest temperature on the 10 day forecast is also 75 and the average low is above 75 for 4 months of the season...so it's not like it gets chilly when the sun goes down like most other places. You're not going to get me to go to many daytime Dodgers games, but night games are downright pleasant and cool. Hot and muggy night games? I'll pass. For comparison's sake, the daily low of Tampa is higher than LA's mean temperature in August...for four consecutive months of the MLB schedule.

Hell, ignore the whole thunderstorm issue and you're still talking about a place that gets nearly twice as much rain as Seattle does...but unlike Seattle that precipitation is heaviest during baseball season rather than the off-season.

I used to live in Florida. I've lived both on the Panhandle and on two different places on the Atlantic coast of South Florida.

Florida rain is different. Since it's not due to fronts/upper-level activity and instead due almost exclusively to extreme convective heating/cooling of warm and moist ocean air, it's paradoxically both more and less predictable than rain in many other places. The high rainfall totals are due to the fact that it never drizzles in Florida; rain means RAIN, as in your windshield wipers on full blast just make it worse so don't bother. But once the rain is over, the sun returns and all that water evaporates right back in your face, waiting for the next go-around. Getting several inches of rain per hour is extremely common in Florida even without a tropical storm involved. The clouds simply grow and grow and grow until they can't grow anymore...and then they show you what they've got whether you're ready or not.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

Whatever issues Montreal has as a market, and it has plenty, are greatly reduced by its size and lack of direct competition. Still have to grow a fan base and nothing grows a fan base better than sustained success, but those are both massive positives.

I imagine new Expos will get their fair share of the entire Canadian market as a whole.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

I imagine new Expos will get their fair share of the entire Canadian market as a whole.

An entire country rooting for one team is just an asinine concept. The Expos would get fans just by not being from Toronto. Probably not wise to build the business model around that, but it absolutely would happen in a way that wasn't possible the last time the Expos played in Montreal.

I'll never forget how much love I got when I visited Montreal and wore some Expos stuff in 2013, I believe. The first team I ever played for was named the Expos, so I'll always have a soft spot for them. Incidentally the second team I played for was the Blue Jays...

Being an American wearing Nordiques gear in QC or Expos gear in Montreal is a great way to drink for free

 

[TheGreenTBer]

An entire country rooting for one team is just an asinine concept. The Expos would get fans just by not being from Toronto. Probably not wise to build the business model around that, but it absolutely would happen in a way that wasn't possible the last time the Expos played in Montreal.

I'll never forget how much love I got when I visited Montreal and wore some Expos stuff in 2013, I believe. The first team I ever played for was named the Expos, so I'll always have a soft spot for them. Incidentally the second team I played for was the Blue Jays...

Being an American wearing Nordiques gear in QC or Expos gear in Montreal is a great way to drink for free

I can vouch for the former.

 

[Blitzkrug]

If and i mean IF you can get the population of Montreal to buy in, i think it could be successful. The Expos were largely a failure the first go round because the team itself was a failure on the field

Multiple "good, but not good enough" seasons where they'd finish second in the division and miss the playoffs because the team in front of them were just better. Multiple choke jobs where they'd either piss away promising seasons or implode in the playoffs (final series against Philly in 1980, Black Monday, etc)

Constantly letting their good players walk (Andre Dawson)

And then not to mention the MLB happily helping burn the body with the 1994 lockout and then dicking the team around in its final days.

If it's to work, i think you need a potential Montreal team to be good ASAP. Let fans know this isn't going to be the same shit as before. If the Rays are the team to move, that would probably be a good bet.

 

[Bjorn Le]

If and i mean IF you can get the population of Montreal to buy in, i think it could be successful. The Expos were largely a failure the first go round because the team itself was a failure on the field

Multiple "good, but not good enough" seasons where they'd finish second in the division and miss the playoffs because the team in front of them were just better. Multiple choke jobs where they'd either piss away promising seasons or implode in the playoffs (final series against Philly in 1980, Black Monday, etc)

Constantly letting their good players walk (Andre Dawson)

And then not to mention the MLB happily helping burn the body with the 1994 lockout and then dicking the team around in its final days.

If it's to work, i think you need a potential Montreal team to be good ASAP. Let fans know this isn't going to be the same shit as before. If the Rays are the team to move, that would probably be a good bet.

The world of baseball is very different now. With revenue sharing and media contracts, an Expos team would not have issues paying players (though they may have issues signing free agents/retaining stars due to Quebec income tax). As well, the stadium is very likely to be built in the Peel Basin near Downtown Montreal, an excellent location to draw large gate revenues.

 

[SSF]

Have heard this all before, will believe Montreal gets a team when they play their first exhibition game.

 

[RyCanadian]

Have heard this all before, will believe Montreal gets a team when they play their first exhibition game.

Same. It's just all talk until it actually happens and I doubt it will.

 

[Bjorn Le]

Same. It's just all talk until it actually happens and I doubt it will.

Except this skepticism isn't rooted in any fact. Negotiations between the Bronfman-backed group and government actors in Quebec, as well as MLB and the Rays, has progressed significantly. Hell, you had François Legault publicly voice support for provincial tax dollars to build a stadium earlier this year.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Rapidly declining pop….

Honestly, this is the best reason why any northern American city (not named Seattle) should not be considered for expansion. Entire country is moving south and really has been for the last 30 years.

 

[RyCanadian]

Except this skepticism isn't rooted in any fact. Negotiations between the Bronfman-backed group and government actors in Quebec, as well as MLB and the Rays, has progressed significantly. Hell, you had François Legault publicly voice support for provincial tax dollars to build a stadium earlier this year.

It's been all talk for the last 10 years, that's good enough fact for me.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

Rapidly declining pop with no downtown appeal and no money.

Are they moving out of the metropolitan area as a whole or are the just moving to the suburbs?

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

I'm opposed to the Rays being two cities when the cities being proposed are so far apart

I think I speak for all of Montreal when I say I want the city to have an MLB team full-time

 

[Bjorn Le]

It's been all talk for the last 10 years, that's good enough fact for me.

You’re literally wrong, but that’s OK.