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If the team does move, I prefer to see it go to a warm weather town for the sake of having some reliable venues for early April baseball. My favorite new site would be Las Vegas, but they'd need an air conditioned domed stadium to play there in the summer heat. I'm thinking Puerto Rico would be a good site too, since the Caribbean area is crazy about baseball. Ideally we'd put a team in Havana after Fidel passes, they are truly baseball crazy.
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If the team does move, I prefer to see it go to a warm weather town for the sake of having some reliable venues for early April baseball. My favorite new site would be Las Vegas, but they'd need an air conditioned domed stadium to play there in the summer heat. I'm thinking Puerto Rico would be a good site too, since the Caribbean area is crazy about baseball. Ideally we'd put a team in Havana after Fidel passes, they are truly baseball crazy.
I don't think you'll ever see a team in Puerto Rico but Fidel would welcome it even now.He is a HUGE baseball fan and has had contact with Steinbrenner many times over the years.I do agree that Las Vegas would be a good choice,but also as a dome stadium.I also think Portland,Indy, or maybe a Carolina team might be a good idea.
I don't think you'll ever see a team in Puerto Rico but Fidel would welcome it even now.He is a HUGE baseball fan and has had contact with Steinbrenner many times over the years.I do agree that Las Vegas would be a good choice,but also as a dome stadium.I also think Portland,Indy, or maybe a Carolina team might be a good idea.
Agree on the Havana angle. I've said that many times here on C-D and in other forums. Here are my words from a year ago in a thread on expansion of MLB. Putting a team in Cuba could help all sides put the past behind them and get on with being neighbors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike from back east
I'd have MLB expand the AL by two teams, raising it from 14 teams to 16 as in the NL. My suggestions are:
1. Las Vegas gets an AL team, in the Western Div, which only has 4 teams. No other division in baseball has only 4 teams. There are NL teams in Phoenix and Denver but no team between Phoenix and the west coast. Las Vegas is a large city with the critical mass to support a team - plus hundreds of thousands of visitors on any given day. Its adds something to do for a change of pace besides sit in a casino all the time, but is compatible with that larger theme of the city.
2. Havana gets an AL team. Goes into the Eastern Div. Baseball is huge in the Caribbean, especially Cuba. After Fidel Castro passes, we should offer a team to Havana as a gesture to let old bygones be bygones, jumpstart modern investment there, generate tourism, and create decent economic conditions so Cubans will no longer need to flee to Miami.
Both proposed teams are warm weather cities. This allows to start the first two weeks of the season in milder climates without fear of snow delays, like we see some years when they try to play in early April in cities around the Great Lakes. Not a guarantee, but the odds favor the warmer cities.
Among the possible places mentioned in the OP: Portland, Las Vegas, San Antonio, and Virginia Beach, it seems Las Vegas is the best choice. I'm from VA, and I don't see VA Beach supporting it at all.
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What you say about a team in Havana makes sense to me, Mike, and I think it is a intriguing idea, but my personal opinion is that there is little to no chance it happens in the next 25 years. If it was solely based on attendance, then yeah, there would already be teams in the Caribbean and Latin American. The MLB wants to stay away from any country that has even a hint of political/cultural instability and we could argue about the infrastructure of Cuba all day but the bottom line is, from a business POV, it is not ready for Major League Baseball.
Putting a team in Cuba could help all sides put the past behind them and get on with being neighbors.
If the Tampa market can't $upport the Devil Rays, how the heck would Cuba do it? It seems that some people have quickly forgotten about the Montreal Expos and their inability to $u$tain the team in Canada, which is a country that is certainly in a better financial position than Cuba. PR was already tried and that failed.
Last edited by Stratford, Ct. Resident; 01-30-2010 at 06:33 AM..
If the Tampa market can't $upport the Devil Rays, how the heck would Cuba do it? It seems that some people have quickly forgotten about the Montreal Expos and their inability to $u$tain the team in Canada, which is a country that is certainly in a better financial position than Cuba. PR was already tried and that failed.
If you haven't realized Montreal is a HOCKEY town.It has nothing to do with finances,just interest which affected attendance. I'm not sure of Cuba would work but a team in other states or possibly Mexico might.
I think Cuba would work. Partly it's about there being a new day coming to Cuba and partly it's about smart business people looking forward and taking reasonable risks.
Few of us Americans have ever been to Cuba; it's been off limits since approximately 1960, or about 50 years now, thus any American who visited Cuba as an adult of age 20 is now age 70. That means almost 300M Americans have never been to Cuba, a large and lovely country. How many times can we go to the Bahamas, visit the straw market and drink ourselves silly.
Cubans are crazy about baseball. The Caribbean countries are crazy about baseball, so is much of Latin America. Conversely, Canada was never big on baseball, it's always been hockey up there as befits their climate.
Putting MLB in Havana would generate a huge tourism trade, cause much hotel building and spinoff businesses that would bring hard currency into a country that needs it.
I don't expect this to happen while Fidel is alive, but once he's gone, it'll be different. The Cold War is long over, Fidel outlived it but he'll pass soon. We should ready; baseball can be the ambassador of goodwill that opens the doors to a better day for us all.
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Personally, I think that a team in San Juan, PR would do well. Certainly not any worse than Tampa! (It would have the added advantage of removing objections from anyone who doesn't want to see MLB on foreign soil).
But something tells me that if the team has to move, the first two sites for consideration would be either Las Vegas--to adjust the current 4-team division--or somewhere in North Carolina, to justify a geographically accurate AL East (and that team will be moving again in a decade or so, because they can't really justify the market there).
Personally I think the Marlins move long before the Rays move. There's talk about a train between Orlando and TB. That will make a huge difference in attendance since the traffic sucks in that area.
On to Cuba, it's only a matter of time before America opens up travel to Cuba. I'd be shocked if it doesn't happen in the next five years (AKA when Fidel finally dies). I have a friend that went to Havana a couple years back. I gave him an old catcher's mitt that I found in someone's garbage to take down. I told him just to throw it to a kid, basically because I had heard how much they love beisbol down there. He said that the kid he gave it to was almost crying over that Lance Parrish model. I think, if MLB did expand to the Caribbean, that Cuba would be a better market then Puerto Rico is. The Cubans would be insanely loyal to their teams because they haven't had American baseball down there in 50 years. Puerto Rican players can come up whenever they want. Cuban players have to defect and then come up. I think that the Cubans would love any player that would be willing to come down there to play. It's a much better atmosphere then Montreal ever was.
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