yeah, florida is just too hot and old to support a baseball team. Plus there is too much other fun stuff to do. The Devil Rays should move. Good candidate cities include:
1. Indianapolis: New baseball only stadium that can be expanded. Great location - growing population with very strong attendance at their minor league games already.
2. Raliegh-Durham: Beautiful nearly new stadium known as the Camden Yards of the south. Strong attendance - outstanding and deep rooted baseball tradition no other area in the country can beat. Also exceptionally large base of high income fans to draw from. Former northerners that have migrated, would love to see those teams visit. Also near RTP which is home to the nation’s largest tech companies including IBM, Cisco, SAS, etc from which the team can draw strong day time attendance, business group functions,etc.
3. Vegas: Old standby wanna team town. Hitting the skids since the recession.
My vote would be for Raleigh Durham. They are the Rays main farm team already. Just move the organization up there, make tampa the AAA team. Keep the Durham Bulls name - and let the Durham Bulls beat the New York Yankees in the next world series!
Vegas, not so much. Not even if they got lucky and were able to reproduce the successful Arizona model. The town is just far too cyclical and single-industry oriented. Either Portland or Salt Lake City would be a better choice. And neither would be particularly good.
RDU isn’t going to happen. The Durham Bulls’ stadium (Durham Bulls Athletic Park, charmingly known as “the DBAP”) only seats around 10,000 and has virtually no room for expansion because it’s built in the middle of downtown with buildings and streets on all sides, limited parking, and limited amenities in the area. It’s a very nice AAA ballpark but nowhere near a Major League facility. Plus, if an MLB team was seriously looking at RDU, Raleigh/Wake County—where 2/3 of the people live—would flex its muscle and the stadium would be put out there where the population is and the politicians are.
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It occurs to me that if RDU was serious about getting a MLB team, they would (I think) consider seriously the prospect of putting a baseball stadium over near the RBC Center and/or Carter-Finley Stadium. Lots of open ground out there near that part of the State Fairgrounds IIRC, and good road access, much better than downtown Durham around the DBAP.
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