The Tampa Bay Rays playing their home ballgames in both Tampa and Montreal sounds like a weird idea, but it’s gaining some traction in baseball circles.
On Thursday, an article from a French language newspaper in Montreal, known as La Presse, came out with an article about an idea which would have the Tampa Bay Rays split their regular season home games in half between Montreal and Tampa. That would mean there would be forty-one games in Tampa and forty-one in Montreal. As a result, potential owners wouldn’t have to pay as much for a team and there would be even more T.V. revenue for the two groups to earn.
Tampa Splitting Rays home games With Montreal?
This is an interesting idea to say the least and it may have some potential, but in all honesty it’s probably a terrible idea in the long term.
There are a few reasons for why this wouldn’t work in the long run. First off, the team still needs a new stadium and I hate to step on people’s toes, but building new stadiums from public funding is not viable seeing as the public never gets that money back and Montreal was once ripped off with a publicly-funded stadium. Yes, the Olympic Stadium would work in the short term, but it will never work in the long term. Again we are living in a society that refuses to foot the bill for something it can’t get any gain from; that’s the first issue.
Another issue is the fact that the team will never feel like Montreal’s own team; sharing for half the season just won’t do it for fans and when the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, and New York Yankees visit Montreal, the stadium will probably be packed with fans supporting those three teams instead of the Rays themselves. That of course takes away the feel of home field advantage. Why would the players want to fell as though they play for the least favorite team if they are supposed to be the home team?
The third issue is the strain, mostly from travel, that this would put on the players and their families. The fact that they would technically be on the road for an extra forty-one games would probably make a lot of players shy away from signing with the Rays organization, which could effect the on-field product.
The La Presse article references the fact that this idea has been used in the past. In 1918, the Boston Braves played a few games in Montreal during the first World War, and it didn’t work out. They referenced how successful the Jacksonville Jaguars have been when playing in London; it needs to be pointed out that the Jags played two games in London, not forty-one. One of the other interesting things they reference is the fact that the Montreal Expos played in Puerto Rico for a portion of their home games during the final two seasons of their existence in 2003 and 2004.
The fans and players both seemed to enjoy playing a few games in San Juan for a while, but that euphoria wore off quickly. When the Expos were trying to make a push for the Wild Card, the unique travel schedule they had to deal with, as well as going back to San Juan instead of Montreal, took a toll on the team and the players. There were other factors that had negative effects on the team, but not playing 100% of the games at home in Montreal definitely hurt. The Expos fans that remained at this point in also felt sadness towards this, as some series, like the Blue Jays vs. the Expos, wouldn’t even be played in Canada, which was ridiculous.
There is just no way it could possibly work. You would have to convince two fan bases that they have to share nicely and agree that the team belongs to both of them. Then you would have to somehow convince the players that this is a good idea and that it’s not more games on the road because it’s two home cities for them. Also, MLB would have to approve this idea which it hasn’t and probably wouldn’t.
Another theory that has been floated for a while is that all this talk about Montreal is just for teams like the Rays and the Oakland A’s to use as leverage to get funding for their own new stadiums in their respective cities. That could be a possibility, but that’s a topic for another day,
It will be a great day when Montreal gets a baseball team to call it’s own in a stadium near the downtown core, say around the Peel Basin. That would be a real treat. For now, however, that is just a dream and unfortunately there is no way splitting a team like the Rays would ever work in Montreal, or anywhere else. It would be really surprising if that idea was ever accepted by MLB and the Rays ownership. I guess all we can do is stayed tuned.
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