Big News In Tampa Bay

We have heard this act before. There's more good news surrounding the Tampa Bay Rays, and hopefully this time it will actually stick and happen. Reports have been coming in from a couple sources that the Stu Sternberg is selling the Rays for about $2 Billion to a group of Jacksonville investors lead by Patrick Zalupski. The sale is reportedly going to go through in September, but at this point, neither the investor Group, nor Sternberg, have made any public comments. It is also believed that the plan from the new ownership group would be to put the rays at a new stadium in Tampa, rather than keep them in St Petersburgh.

There's good and there's bad to this.

The good is, it finally gets Sternberg the hell out of the owners box. Yes, there has been a fair amount of success in Tampa since Stu took over as owner in 2005.n That includes two AL Pennants and four AL East division titles. But the owner seemingly refuses to re-invest any money back into the ball club. By that, we mean make upgrades to the ballpark. Or even get a new ballpark built in the area to keep the Rays in St Pete. If this does go through, it will hopefully allow money to get back into the team. It will allow the team to spend money on competing talent in the AL East. It will allow them to maintain a world class stadium in the area as well. Among other things.

Then, of course, there's the skeptic in me. The Rays have gotten our hopes up over the last year. With the new stadium deal that was set in place, but then was shot down. The roof of the Trop getting blown off (that wasn't on ownership that was Mother Nature). It seems like when the Rays have anything going good, or it looks like it might be good, something gets pulled out from under them. Everything that has been talked about since the announcement came down yesterday has been speculation. 

Here's hoping this will actually go through and the new owners actually take over.