Longtime Tampa-based baseball writer and historian Pete Williams tells Nestor why he believes the Rays will stay in the region even though they’ve had a devil of a time drawing fans and finding a permanent home on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Nestor Aparicio and Pete Williams discuss the Tampa Bay Rays’ current success and potential new ownership. Williams highlights the Rays’ impressive on-field performance despite playing in a minor league stadium, Steinbrenner Field. He notes the complexities of stadium relocation and the impact of new ownership. Williams also reflects on the broader challenges facing Major League Baseball, including declining popularity and the need for innovative business models like the “Battery” model from Atlanta. They touch on the Orioles’ struggles and the potential for new ownership to revitalize the team. Williams also shares his personal journey in baseball journalism and his passion for sports memorabilia.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Tampa Bay Rays, new ownership, Steinbrenner Field, baseball stadium, analytics, fan engagement, Baltimore Orioles, Camden Yards, real estate development, sports memorabilia, baseball history, USA Today, baseball journalism, sports card business, Card Sharks.
SPEAKERS
Pete Williams, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore positive. Around here we got a Maryland crab cake tour thing in progress all summer long, the Maryland lottery putting this out with this liberty pure My dear friends are doing well water and clean water and fresh water and plumbing water, as well as curio wellness and foreign daughter, all putting us together for our 27th anniversary. Soon cometh in August, to eat a lot of food, swallow a lot of crab cakes and crab soup and all sorts of things. And my favorite things to eat that will begin on August the third, which is my mother’s birthday, my cat’s birthday, and our 27th anniversary of doing this crazy, crazy thing. I’ve collected so many people. I’m collecting some of them to get to deepest squales On the eighth of July, on Tuesday morning, including Dan Rodricks, Pete, karenge, Joji or Donna. Feeling an all star team for all star week at deepest squales down at Canton. I promise I’ll be having meatballs before 10am and sausage and peppers and onions, and then on the 10th we’re going to be a Costas and Timonium. No crabs, but plenty of crab cakes. The new location there at the racetrack. This guy is no stranger to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, certainly not to my life. I’ve known him for more than three decades. Now we’re going back to probably all star game. 93 is probably around the time I met Pete Williams. He is a baseball historian. He is a triathlete and an athlete. And tampen not by birth, but by choice. When they gave him a choice to go cover baseball, he’s like, I’ll go to Tampa. And he never left. He is still associated with baseball, but as he likes to say, off the radar, unless some guy like me calls him and says, Hey, dude, what’s going on with the rays? And the Orioles are playing the rays, and my team’s in last place, and what the heck’s going on? And, dude, it gives me an excuse to do other things than find you in Tampa once a year and try to have a beer when you’re not flooded, and and talk a little baseball. Pete Williams was a long time scribe at USA baseball weekly in USA Today, he’s written books on memorabilia, which makes him one of my favorite people, and he’s one of my favorite dudes as well. What’s going on, Pete, how you been man,
Pete Williams 02:12
good doing. Great. Nestor, great to be here with you. And things are exciting here in the Tampa Bay area, with possible new ownership of the rays. And of course, the race playing extremely well. Nobody expected this, because here they are playing in a 10,500 seat stadium, Steinbrenner field, 2020, 35, miles from from where they normally play at Tropicana Field, which is still a mess and plenty of uncertainty surrounding this team in terms of where they’re going to play next year, where they’re going to play three to five years from now. But, but nonetheless, it doesn’t affect the product on the field. They are just rolling, and the Yankees have got them in their tail winds right now.
Nestor Aparicio 02:45
Where did you get your gig at USA Today? Like, is that 90? Not when the 190 somewhere in the early 90s? When did you, like, start baseball journalism?
Pete Williams 02:54
Yeah, 1991 it was good for me, like you. I was one of those people who knew exactly what they wanted to do when they went off to college and whatnot. And so right out of college, where’d you go to school? UVA, okay, sorry, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 03:09
wrong side of the ACC very, pretty much.
Pete Williams 03:10
We could talk at UVA at lengths. And what a train wreck they are on so many levels right now. But right out of school, I’d interned with USA Today prior to my senior year of college, and when, when during my senior year of college, they formed USA Today baseball weekly, and they were going to hire me as a college sports writer. And I said, Well, how about this baseball weekly thing? They’re like, yeah, sure, we don’t have anybody right now. I think they’d hired Paul, Paul white, the great Paul White, who was our original editor, and I was the second
Nestor Aparicio 03:39
true buffalonian, by the way, they’re real, real buffalo. Man, yes.
Pete Williams 03:43
And so I was a second person, hired, even though I had another four months of college left to go. And so I was
Nestor Aparicio 03:48
hired, received next to two cartoons. I think that’s
Pete Williams 03:52
right, that’s right. He was, he was there from the beginning as well. And so, so yeah, off for June of 1991 I was offered off and running with baseball weekly. And I stayed there pretty much for the rest of the 90s, which we think of now as the steroid era. Very, very colorful time to be covering baseball. I prefer
Nestor Aparicio 04:10
to think it is the Andrew Steen Dion period of time. So I mean, the reason I even date you like that is to say when you came into this Camden Yards was coming online. You lived in the region, Arlington, Virginia, was sort of the home base for USA Today. And one of the two of you were always in the press box because the Orioles were the home team. There weren’t no nationals and no senators, and the Orioles were great. And, you know, Ripken was on his way to doing things, and Camden Yards was where Larry King was here, and will, you know, George Will was there, and it was just that thing, right? So fast forward all of these years. We went to spring training, probably not together, but together. I’m sure I ran into you down there in Florida in the 90s, tripping over each other when the Orioles were figuring out al Lang stadium on St Pete and Sarasota and and then Angelo’s buying. The team and the strike and Lords of the Realm, all of that happened, Ripken streak and and then then Davey Johnson and the end of steroids. I mean, those are one year, and those are snapshots of your All Star game here in 93 all of those things. So you and I were always entangled, and we’re down in Florida, and we saw that market, and they saw that market, Major League Baseball. Bud Selig, you know, after the insurrection with with the commissionership there, and you moved to Florida, your whole life has been in Florida because of baseball chased you down there. Rick Vaughn is going to join me this week, from the former Orioles. And Charles Steinberg painted the picture of the final day in 91 with Rick with me about a month, month and a half ago, I’m now, let’s see three owners in right. We had Jacobs, Angelo Summit, Rubenstein, your life, got chased to Tampa, and they had an owner there named Vince the Morley. And I told a comedy piece with Rick Vaughn and Charles Steinberg. A couple of weeks I told Joel poily That story, that I had a plane ride with him one time. I sat next to him in the twins on the way to Tampa, 25 years ago, and now you’re on the Sternberg and he and about to sell. Could you have envisioned in 1991 that the Orioles would be on a second train wreck ownership, that Tampa would have failed miserably in baseball, like in so many ways, but been good on the field. The Miami thing is, whatever that spaceship they’re playing in, I mean, like, it’s insane, the pathway that Major League Baseball has taken, and how the Expos has affected the Orioles, which affected the Nationals, just how many things they’ve destroyed and wrecked and screwed up, and as Deepak Chopra would say, the pure potentiality that they have, it boggles my mind, like when I think about the Tampa situation and how they screwed baseball up in a place where baseball could have easily worked. Yeah.
Pete Williams 07:01
I mean, it’s a complex situation. And I left the DC area to come to Tampa at the end of 1997 and we think, Geez, I think the Oriole Park, Camden yard sellout streak, I think was still alive at that point. That’s it even signed Albert Bell yet. Yes, exactly. And so, yeah, you think of how many permutations that the Orioles have had just on the field since then, just just staggering. But I think just watching the rays, and formerly the Devil Rays here, from the beginning, it’s been quite a run. And Vince Namo Lee, he got them over the hump, just to get a team. And he was, he was a complex guy, a guy who, you know, managed every penny, he fought every battle. I mean, he came from the corporate world. He just did not get running a baseball team at all. He there, there was no tact to the man. He was a General Patton kind of guy and just but I will say this about Vince nemoli. The guy was passionate about Devil Rays and rays baseball. I mean, the guy, the guy went to every home game, he went to most road games. I mean, the current owner, Stuart Sternberg, I don’t think, has been to 100 raise home games in his 20 years of ownership, and but that’s, that’s the one knock I have on Stu Sternberg, and that’s if you think, if you or I had made a fortune in finance by the end of Fort, by our mid 40s, right, and you bought the Tampa Bay Rays. What’s the first thing you would have done move to Tampa Bay? Right? You’d have said, hey, I can live absolutely anywhere. Why am I staying in Westchester County or somewhere in New York? I could move to Tampa Bay. You’d think you might have bought a house in the Tampa Bay area, something Stu Sternberg never did until, like COVID. So he went 1518, years without even having a home your heck wouldn’t you do that for tax purposes, if nothing else? And yet, he’s probably never seen excluding the postseason. The rays have played a lot of postseason games, but I’d be willing to bet he has not seen 100 regular season home games in the Tampa Bay area in the 20 years he’s been there. I mean, why else? If you’re filthy rich at 46 and buy a sports team. You know, would you not come live in that town and go to like every game? I think most of us, we would probably be like young Mark Cuban, right? We would be on the right behind the bench and be allowed them
Nestor Aparicio 09:11
now, I have my own bobble head. No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even be that dumb. I mean, I’m 56 and if I was that wealthy, I would not be making a bobble out of myself, it just wouldn’t be doing that. And that happened here as a first act. So when, when you see stuff like that, and when you like on the inside, 1518, months into this now, it Be careful what you wish for a new ownership, right? I mean, I’m saying to you, you’re pissed. It’s, it’s Stu Sternberg, and then the moly thing and the the roof’s blown off, and they’re playing in a minor league. They don’t have a stadium. Sort of weirdly in peril. This Jacksonville billionaire is going to come in. I just I’ve been waiting my whole effing life for a new owner, and I met this guy last November, and. I just don’t get it. I mean, I don’t. And I get that you get so wealthy you buy these things as toys. But I thought that there’d be some intellect and some emotional intelligence behind this. But I’ve really learned far too late in my life that the money doesn’t necessarily buy anything that goes along with it, and many, many respects, it masks it. And the people that buy these teams now are what makes them awful. I mean, what made the Marlins awful was the owner. What made the Orioles awful was the owner? Was it the city wasn’t, the fans, wasn’t. And then on top of that, the Major League Baseball people, when the Orioles go from playing in Sacramento one day to playing at George Steinbrenner field, then a double a ballpark the next day and like, and I just everything about it says you people have your shit together. I mean, does anybody there? You know we’re gonna put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. What are you guys doing? Like, you have a billion dollar industry that’s dying. You haven’t figured out TV, you haven’t figured out young people. You really haven’t figured out Hispanic people beyond Dodger Stadium. You haven’t you certainly haven’t figured out anyone of color in the game or in the pipeline of the game. And golf’s already taken for that. And I’m like, I’m just blown away at the just the ineptitude of it and where I am in my life at 56 to say, Dude, when I’m 66 and 76 unless I’m getting paid to do this, I might not be watching it. And my name’s Aparicio, yeah, exactly.
Pete Williams 11:36
And then so, and you compare the baseball say to the NBA, which I have found unwatchable for a long time, right? And nobody was a bigger NBA fan than I was. I mean, growing up in the DC area, I didn’t move to DC until 1980 so in other words, I missed the last two years where the bullets wizards were actually relevant. But I was a huge fan of the bullets for a long time, until I moved here in 1990 you got Jeff ruling, and you liked it? Well, you know what? Those teams were fun, the beef brothers, right? Ruling, Rick mahorn. I mean, they got the last good years of Bernard King and Moses Malone. They were manup Bull, Mugsy books. Those were fun teams, don’t get me wrong. But the point is, I find today’s NBA unwatchable, but it’s never been more popular. I mean, I have two college age sons who love the NBA. Look. I don’t want to watch seven footers like Joel Embiid take fade away jump shots. I just don’t I want to see guys pound and go inside a Big East dog. Yes, I want old Big East I want mid 90s New York Knicks. I want all that. I don’t want to watch Kevin Durant taking 30 jump shots a game. He’s seven feet tall. I don’t want to watch that. Now this said the NBA has never been more popular. I can’t figure it out, but it is now getting back to baseball. Baseball has never been less popular and so
Nestor Aparicio 12:55
but they won’t say, Hey, if you said that in front of Rob Manford, he piss in your eye, and he’d show you, he he’d have stats that somebody had, like, literally, I feel it. You feel it. You see it. I see it. They don’t even acknowledge it. They’re in denial. Man, they really are.
Pete Williams 13:10
Well, they’ll say, Look, we’re a $10 billion business. 20 years ago, we were a $4 billion business. I’m like, Well, okay, there’s been inflation and everything. I mean, you’ve, succeeded on the bottom line, kind of despite yourself. But yes, when we measure it in terms of popularity, where you are in the national consciousness, I can remember Howie Long. Remember when Howie Long went into the hall of fame? What? 30 years ago he got up there and he said, baseball might be America’s national pastime, but football is America’s national passion, and that was 30 years ago. I don’t think anybody’s arguing that baseball still national, the national pastime. It’s the national past. It’s time. No question about it. There’s no question what the NFL has done, you know, to run laps around baseball, and now the NBA has and
Nestor Aparicio 13:56
hockey is crushing it in your market, and you’re in Tampa, the NHL came in and just took over and in Nashville, where they were going to get a baseball team first they got a football team first they got a hockey team. They can have an NBA team if they want one, because they could support it there financially, and your team’s playing in a minor league Park. Sacramento can’t find a home. They talk about Montreal, what happened to Charlotte, Nashville and Austin and Nolan Ryan and in the Pittsburgh Pirates. And there’s just so many black eyes in the sport right now that have to do with interest level that they just, I just feel like their heads in the sand. And I always felt like Pete, like somebody was going to come in when Angelo’s went into disrepair and come in here and try to fix it, but they don’t know how to fix it. They really don’t know how to fix the streaming thing and whatever the country club pass that’s going to make me a bird land guy, whatever that thing’s going to do that I’m going to give them 90. $9 a year to get a ticket a hot dog, the games on TV, whatever that subscription is going to be for baseball specifically, and then all the sports, I don’t think they have a model Pete. And the model is, get $20 from people when they come in. Get $20 for a beer. Do we cheat them in house, sell some jerseys, give away some bobble heads, milk some cows. Like, I don’t see an idea here, fixing the games good. I mean, Luke yells at me and says, hey, they got pace to play together. The game’s better, but is it when everybody’s throwing 99 miles an hour and their arms are falling off? Like, I don’t know, and I’m not here to bitch and make it all awful, but you’re in a market where you might lose your baseball team and the new owners coming in and they’re trying to fix it, and I’m trying to figure out, like this new owner came in here and he’s already screwed up, what was left of it, because he’s gonna have to go sell season tickets at the end of the year to the Birdland people here and last place, no bueno. Pete, no bueno. It’s going to look like Tampa Bay here next year.
Pete Williams 16:03
Well, I think the biggest part you hit on it is no one can figure out how to watch their team on TV anymore, how you can piece it together and whatnot. And a Braves fan, I know, put it succinctly the other day. He goes, we all grew up in the 80s and late 70s, where the Braves were all we could watch, right? That was almost literally all we could watch on
Nestor Aparicio 16:22
Channel 17, on my on my cable, and I only had 31 channels I had, or too I did I had or on channel nine,
Pete Williams 16:29
right? But, but now Braves fans are held hostage, like so many of us, where we can’t figure out how to watch our team and how many different streaming cable combinations we have to get in order to watch some of the games, not all of the games. And that’s a problem here in the Tampa Bay area, as it is in so many parts of the country, because of all the things that have blown up and the all the battles and the cables and everything else
Nestor Aparicio 16:52
two countries, by the way, and I’ll anecdotally give you this one. Opening Day, Luke and I went to Toronto. They didn’t let me in. They put Luke in the press box in left field, where they’re going to be moving the Jim Adam and press box A week after he’s dead. They put the press release out on video that they’re killing the press box that they named after him, my colleague. So I’m going to fight for that. But the second game in Toronto, I paid to get in. First day, opening day, walked around, drank beer with my friends, did the thing. The second game, my ankle was cut. I didn’t want to walk around the city until I was 28 degrees, and Luke went over to the game. And I’m in my hotel room in Toronto. It was a Friday night game. I went down to the keg as any good Canadian would do, and got some happy hour sliders and a discounted Cabernet. I listened to Canadians destroy America everywhere at the bar, because it was the beginning of all the nonsense. March 30. It was tariffs. It was all it was, you’re going to be the 51st state. That’s what was on the that was what was on The Apprentice that week. And the bartender, I’m in there, 536 o’clock at night, and the Raptors were home. And I said to him, will the game be on here tonight? He’s like, No, my friend, Apple TV. Nobody in the city has Apple TV. The Blue Jays won’t be on tonight. They will not be on television in this country tonight, not in this city, not in any bar. And I’m in the most, third, most cosmopolitan city in our in our in this continent. Maybe fourth, I’ll give you Mexico City. But they’re trying in a hockey town where they’ve won basketball championships. And Joe Carter was 32 years 33 years ago. Now, 32 years ago. Um, I’m in the city. I went to my hotel room. The game wasn’t on, and I’m not giving Apple TV anything beyond what Johnny Cash would give them. I’m in Toronto, and nobody’s watching the second game of the year, Pete, but I did get Roku on Sunday, and Buck and Nelly were unbelievable on the call. So if that matters, but to your point, you can’t find the game. And this is 50, oh god, oh white guy stuff. I can’t find the game. I don’t want the game. I don’t want to give Apple my thing, or whatever. And Luke, who’s only 4041, would yell at us and say, Well, get used to it. This is the rest of your life. And I’m like, Well, you know what? I got used to not watching the NBA like Pete, right? I mean, and that should be their greatest fear, that people like you and me who love baseball don’t want to be a part of it anymore. It’s insane.
Pete Williams 19:28
I mean, we talk about the any rehab program talks about 30 day habits, right? If you go 30 days without something, you kind of get used to not having it, right? And so something that we’re addicted to watching baseball, right? It’s, been a 55 year addiction for me, but if I can’t watch it, well done. No longer addicted to it, and I learned to find other things to do. And so then that’s, that’s what I think baseball’s biggest problem is, is that you have an aging demographic that can no longer go to the ballpark but is willing to watch your product. On TV, but if they can’t do that, then they’re not going to consume your product at all. And if they can’t do that, then you’re going to lose what is your demographic right now, which is to say, white guys over the age of 55 were in that demographic.
Nestor Aparicio 20:12
But we’re the ones that buy the club seats. We’re the ones that would have value in this. We’re the ones that would want air conditioning. We’re the like we’re the ones that like old logos instead of these spaceships that they’re putting on that don’t mean anything to anybody. And if they’re really connecting with the young people, why aren’t they in the seats? Pete Williams is here. He is a longtime baseball author, historian. Now let me turn it the other way, does anybody? Oh, you’re nasty. No, you negative. Baltimore, last place, the team sucks. The owners making bobble heads of himself. He’s been hiding General Manager, fired the manager and hit for three and a half days and re emerged in the Milwaukee dugout on Tuesday night after firing. I mean, we’re at a point where there’s no accountability. Um, you know, people named Aparicio have owned radio stations dedicated to sports for 30 years. Can’t get a press credential because the owners following the protocol of the creep who destroyed the franchise for three decades, but they’re not acknowledging the trauma of 10,000 empty seats at their playoff game last year. Let’s go positive. What in your market now here, I thought it was going to be new ownership and a bath for the for the stadium, right? Like we and young great players, right? We Jackson holiday gunner, that was going to be the thing that got this thing from crawling back up to walking back up to running back up to being what you found in 1993 at the All Star game here, which is vibrant downtown, 3 million people coming to games, black people, white people, young people, Hispanic people, uh, coming to the games, filling up the hotels, buying the swag, finding hero worshiping gunner Henderson or Jackson holiday that they found in Cal Ripken, that they found in Eddie Murray and Jim Palmer and Brooks and Boo, right and Frank, I don’t want to forget him. Tampa. What’s the temperature for like, crystal ball this in 1997 if I would have told you it turned out the way it did, you would have said, no, no, Tampa baseball work here, and they’ll get a new stadium, and the dome might not be the answer, but they’ll figure it out. And it’s baseball and it’s Tampa, and it’s like, it’s Darryl Strawberry, and it’s Wade Boggs, and it’s Fred McGriff, and it’s it’s not good, and it’s all of that Gary Sheffield. I’ll throw them all in what saves baseball in Tampa. I mean, be positive about this, and think that we can hire Rick back and bring you and me and the best ideas ever, and bring Joe Maddon back as the executive something, something to the whatever, and appeal to the lightning fan, like, how would successful Tampa baseball look to this billionaire in Jacksonville who’s going to come down and maybe buy
Pete Williams 22:49
it? Well, I think two things. I think one, if they can continue the the master of analytics and everything else, because, I mean, look how this team has been run, from an on field standpoint, has been nothing short of masterful. I mean, these guys, whatever algorithm they’re using, whatever players they put out there on any given night, whatever trade they make, whatever move, however they’re managing that that has been an A plus plus. Nobody has done that better in the Tampa Bay Rays for the last 15 years. They they deserve all the credit in the world for that. And whoever buys that team, they need to keep that management team intact. Now, what they need more than anything is a new stadium. And of course, people debate that to no end here. Where should the stadium be? Whatever, whatever. I mean, we did have that deal in place until the hurricanes kind of blew that up. And we can say who’s at fault. There is it? Stu Sternberg, is it the city of St Pete? Is it the Pinellas County Commission? Who knows what was the plan? What was going to happen? Yeah. So what they were going to do is they were going to build a new stadium with the surrounding infrastructure of of everything, bars, restaurants, housing and everything right next to the existing Tropicana Field, the
Nestor Aparicio 23:56
battery model at the foot of the trop, basically. And that area is kind of gutted out, kind of like not a lot going on over there. It’s away from the water, and kind of a new little downtown they’re trying to create, right?
Pete Williams 24:08
But it has blown up. I mean, the downtown has gone crazy. And then on the other side of the trop also, that’s become a very popular area, bars, restaurants toward Madeira Beach, correct? Yeah. So, so Exactly. So you have this 80 ish acres that that is the trop footprint, basically, that they were going to redo, and that that deal was in place. But after the hurricanes, everything was off the table. The rays backed off, and the city of the city of St Pete and new Pinellas County Commissioners didn’t want to renegotiate the deal. And so here we are, and so Stu Sternberg, who did engender a lot of goodwill just because of the way the team was run for the last 20 years of his ownership, nonetheless, has become cast, rightly so, as the guy who has to go and so that’s why new ownership. But I think long term thing, it’s going to be new ownership and a new ballpark, whether that’s where they’re planning to do it in downtown St Pete or. Or they’re going to revisit anything and everything in terms of other Tampa Bay Area sites. That’s the long term hope for the future of the Tampa Bay race. I’m
Nestor Aparicio 25:07
going to give Stu Sternberg the benefit of the doubt that he’s taking some tax benefits from owning the team in Florida, even though he didn’t take citizenship down there. Um, what did he buy it for? What’s he selling it for?
Pete Williams 25:19
Oh, goodness. I mean, the the numbers he’s getting for 1.8 billion. I mean, he went in in 2005 he led a group for 150 million and and how much of that was actually his? Who knows, maybe 50 million. So
Nestor Aparicio 25:33
he’s not fat, right? He’s not like he would be the one of the least wealthy baseball owners, in a way that, like ponying up 800 million, the way that you know and shoots would, or the way that the clown that stole the Rams out of out of St Louis did, the Missourian who took the Rams to La like building a stadium or being a part of that he didn’t have the financial teeth or want to do that. Rubenstein has portrayed himself as being that guy, but he’s got 600 million to start with from the government. That’s not going to happen in Florida, right? That’s just that the kind of deals they have here to take $600 million and do away with the Jim Henneman press box and, and, and, and put a facing on it. And Tropicana Field was unsavable as a facility, right? Like they there was no fixing that thing up. It was going to get raised, right? No matter what? Yeah,
Pete Williams 26:24
there, there was no, there was no model that you could remodel Tropicana Field. And you know what? In fairness to the trop though, if you’ve been to places like where the Houston Astros play, or where the new Texas Rangers play, really, those are just nicer versions, because they always have the roof closed. It’s artificial turf. Those are just nicer versions of the trop because it’s 110 degrees. I
Nestor Aparicio 26:45
never hated the trop. I’m honestly I never hated the trop. I went there many times. I sort of get the Tampa thing about the bridges and whatever. But I didn’t think it was a lousy experience at all. I always get treated well there the ushers. I mean, just the way the vibe of going to a game there, it’s 150 outside. You come inside. I, I went to the one in Miami, and hated it way more. It was brand new, because it was awful. It was way more artificial. It felt a little gritty to be in Tampa. I felt like there was something about it that they could make it a tough place to play, if they could ever figure it out. But Pete, my dying story on this, and I, I’m sure you were at this game, my my wife and I were in Florida. Early Days of YouTube, I would say, Oh 708, and the or the ravens, played the dolphins at one o’clock in Miami, and game seven of the ALCS was that night in Tampa. And I was covering the game. I went from the locker room in Miami out the door into my wife’s rental car, and she drives like Steve McQueen, and we hit the Alligator Alley and we we made top of the second inning for the ALCS game seven. Um, I paid $15 for a ticket that night, and there were 5000 empty seats in the upper deck, and it was mainly Red Sox fans. Now I’m going back 1718, years, and I’m thinking to myself, Man, you must really not care about the baseball team if you’re not willing to pay 20 bucks to come see him play in the ALCS. This is Joe Madden. It’s all of that. And I look up now, and it really has never gotten any better. I mean, for all the winning and all of that, I think of the last 15 years of your franchise. And think if you put that kind of winning down almost anywhere, certainly in Baltimore, if they had been that good, you know, if the buck thing would have held on for another 10 years, they would have sold tickets here, you know what? I mean, something good, even though Angelo sounded could have happened out of that. But I just, I look at the Tampa thing and say the stadium was their doom, right? Like, how you and I feel about the stadium was not how people in Tampa felt about the stadium, right?
Pete Williams 28:51
No, there’s no question. But I think that the thing I always explain to people, if you live in the Baltimore, DC area, if you live in Atlanta, you live in LA, you live in most parts of the country, you’re accustomed to driving 30 to 45 minutes to get anywhere. It’s just the nature of the beast. And Tampa, for the longest time, has been very provincial. They’ve been separated by the bridges. People move here from somewhere else. Maybe they’ve retired, downsized, whatever. They don’t want to drive anywhere. And so you get that mentality. And so it’s very hard to get people to say, Hey, I’m going to drive 40 minutes to tonight’s game. Okay, which, again, if you’re from the DC area, like I am, like, 40 minutes, man. I think of all those years I went from Alexandria, Virginia to land over Maryland to see the bullets, the caps, concerts, whatever, I’d be thrilled if I got there in 40 minutes, right? But it’s a different mentality down here, and that’s what’s always been the struggle. People are like, I just don’t want to drive 40 minutes. Everyone wants the stadium to be 10 minutes from where they are. And you can’t do that no matter where you put it. You could put it in Tampa, you could put it right next to Ray J That’s true, but you’re going to lose all the people in Pinellas County. You’ll get more from those. County, and that’s fine, but so there’s no simple stadium solution. Wherever they build this stadium, and I’m sure it’ll be lovely. It’ll be modeled after the battery in Atlanta. Will be a real estate windfall for the you
Nestor Aparicio 30:11
believe it’s happening now because this guy’s buying it you. So you believe the team’s staying? Because, yes, I don’t think
Pete Williams 30:16
they’re going to Nashville. I don’t think they’re going to somewhere else. I think they will stay. But again, much like we’ve seen in many communities like Pittsburgh, for instance, it’s the new stadium. Is not a cure all for revenue. It’s not a cure all, certainly for the pirates, for how they perform on the field. But nonetheless, I think it’s going to be, it’ll be a it’ll help. But to your point, I think the biggest challenge we’ve always had here in Tampa Bay is that there are other things to do, right? Yes, the Buccaneers are always going to be popular, but that’s eight. That’s eight Sundays a year, or maybe 1012, 11, depending on how the Buccaneers are doing with the playoffs here, there’s always other things to do. You’re always competing with the water, the weather. You’re competing with fun things to do in the Tampa Bay area that put this area on the map long before the Devil Rays were ever here, and that makes it hard. Now somebody’s gonna say, Well, what about the lightning? The lightning Sell out 41 dates a year. That’s true too, but again, it’s half the number of dates that the rays have. And the lightning didn’t draw well for a long time, not before they became maybe the most well run franchise in the NHL over the last 15 years, did they start selling out every game? So you put those two things together, and it’s always going to be a tough recipe for the rays, no matter where they play.
Nestor Aparicio 31:29
Pete Williams is my guest. He’s a long time author, baseball historian, long time USA baseball weekly. He’s written books on memorabilia as well as fitness and all sorts of places you can find him on the internet. He’s down in Tampa, and my resident guy on the street, how many games you go
Pete Williams 31:42
to? Well, this year for the rays, it’s I’ve been to five or six over
Nestor Aparicio 31:47
close to there. Now right
Pete Williams 31:50
closer. I moved a little closer. It’s about an easy 20 to 25 minute drive, and it’s fun. It really is. Now the heat is oppressive, and it was oppressive in May. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 31:59
that’s what I say. And we’re learning about the dome situation is that like this waterfront al Lang spring training vibe that I have on a march 18 night, when it’s pleasant, that’s been my spring training experience, that’s not react. I mean, I’ve been to Florida plenty of time. My wife’s mother lives down there. She goes down and gets mosquito bites and hates this time of year, but I saw it on time. TV, and I’m thinking that’s the lesson learned here that you can’t I mean, the Marlins learned that for years. Right now, they got a dome, and that thing’s just a disgrace. I mean, it’s just awful. Everything about that experience is awful. I hope Tampa can learn from that. And I guess that’s why I’m asking you, is saying the thing should have worked all along. You moved down there 30 years ago, thinking it would work. Now you got a new guy, new gig, you know, open palette, right? Like, you know, the whiteboard is there for whatever they’re going to do. It seems to me that good ideas can save these things. Good Ideas can make these things thrive. I believe that, and I’ll get to that in a minute with you on the Orioles thing, because I want to stay on the Tampa thing, because I find it fascinating of where that template is that makes the baseball version of the Tampa lightning. That makes the baseball version of what the Orioles were here for 40 years before they came and screwed it up. It’s what can make this good and viable and all that they say it’s going to be and not what baseball fans feel like right now, which is they’re just after my ATM card. You know what? I mean? They just think I’m, uh, they think I’m a wallet. They don’t. Pete, this new group is so blind to everything, like I’m being really I got an A, W, N, S, T text brought to you by coal roofing and Gordian energy. Luke sent it out. They moved the game time up on the fans. They told the fans at nine in the morning, we’re playing at four today, not six, so get here because it’s going to rain. I’ve never heard us. I don’t know how they mobilized workers and people and like all of that, but they just woke up in the morning and said games, not tonight, it’s this afternoon today. Sorry. Like I, I just could, I’ve never heard of such a thing. I could not believe it.
Pete Williams 34:13
Yeah, the closest you’ve seen is NFL with some of their flex scheduling, where they’ve kind of moved some things around, and people who already had plans. Say they’re screwed because they’ve already paid to be there on this date. Maybe they’re traveling from the other town, but we’re seeing more and more of this. And how do you make plans? How do you Hey, I can’t make it at four. I work. I can’t I was planning to be there at six.
Nestor Aparicio 34:32
Work, sitter, dinner plans, relatives, picking people up. Kids are at school. Like it? Like, did you just got to get the game in, or do the people matter at all? You know, like, and in playoff games, I sort of understand television, and game five might be at one, it might be at seven. It’s Friday, we’ll figure that’s that was an F you enough when I was holding Philly’s playoff tickets a number of years ago. And I’m like, is the game one? On Is it four? Is it seven? When is the game? I don’t I need to know when the game is. It’s tomorrow, you know. But when they’re sending out texts today and saying, we’re moving tonight’s game up a couple of hours, figure it out like I who in the office thinks that’s okay, and I guess the population thinks it’s okay because fans didn’t revolt. I mean, I I guess anything’s Okay, which is, I mean, I look at who’s running the country, and we’re dropping bombs on rent, anything can be justified. But from a business perspective, the lightning wouldn’t do that I’m saying, or to piss fans off. They would have an idea of earning their fans. And the rays are going to have to earn their fan. Baseball needs to earn their fans in every way. There’s only a couple places where New York Yankees Dodgers, it rolls off, but every other place, they’re all sort of under review by their own fan base as they reach for our wallets take games away when I’m in Toronto or Roku or Apple TV or whatever they’re going to do and behave with the arrogance of the NFL to think you’ll just be lining up when we get playoff tickets and you’ll pay whatever we tell you to pay. And I remember that mentality here. It’s gone. Brooks is dead, you know, like it’s over for that they need to figure this out moving forward. And I don’t know if they have ideas, Pete, and I don’t know that the people who have the ideas that I like their ideas,
Pete Williams 36:27
right? And no longer, does television solve all right? I mean, they could justify it, I think for the longest time. Hey, if we don’t draw any fans, the television money is paying the bills. Well, that’s not the case with baseball anymore. So they have to figure that out. You ask about the raise and what’s going to be the panacea here? I think it is going to be the battery model from Atlanta. I think that’s what everybody is pointing to. They’re like, whoever the billionaire takes over with the raise, he’s going to say, Well, look, it is going to be a challenge with a new stadium, no matter what, but we’re going to do so well on the real estate side of this, as are the Braves with everything around the battery, wherever they build this new ballpark, it’s going to be in an area of Tampa Bay area with it can still be developed the acreage around it. Jeffrey Vinick did this with the lightning. He didn’t have as many acres to play with in downtown Tampa, but he had some, and he’s done very well there. I mean, if you go to downtown Tampa today, it is you can’t get your bear. If you hadn’t been to downtown Tampa in 15 years, you wouldn’t get your bearings. You’d be like, Where the heck am I? Because there’s been so much development there. Some of the landmarks no longer exist, other than the former Ice Palace, that’s about it. They’ve been so many high rises and buildings and whatever. And that’s all because of Jeffrey Vinick. What’s he’s he’s been able to develop while he’s been running, of course, the lightning very well, and so that’s the business model. I think, for anyone looking at the raise, I’m going to make it on the real estate side. Yes, Stu Sternberg, I think was looking at that. But I think part of him, as he’s gotten out of said, You know what, I’m 66 years old. I’ve never been in love with this area. I’ve never spent much time here. Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life as a real estate developer in St Petersburg. I think that’s the bottom line. Why he’s cashing out, getting his 1.7 and putting his estate plan in place for his children. He’s like, Okay, I’m out. I don’t want to be mister Saint Pete. And I think as if we look at other baseball owners who are getting into this, they want the Atlanta battery model for wherever that’s going to be. Can you do it in Baltimore? Maybe there’s certainly room for it around Oriole Park at Camden Yards, not to degree we’re talking about in the Tampa Bay
Nestor Aparicio 38:27
area. But that can’t be built up because of the tunnel underneath of it,
Pete Williams 38:31
exactly, and so, so there’s not the real estate upside there, but you know what, there is in a lot of other places, and they’re looking, we know we’re going to see this with Vegas, with the A’s, and we’re going to see this with other teams that are that are looking around whether they move or not. They’re like, what’s the real estate upside to a new ballpark in this community?
Nestor Aparicio 38:48
Pete Williams is my guest. You know, the paradigms change, right? Because back when Larry lakino was fighting with the state to get money to build Camden Yards, it was, we are going to make this good for the community. This is going to we’re going to have hotels, we’re going to have tax revenue. We’re going to have Phillips is going to sell crab cakes. We’re going to have the harbor. It’s going to bring people to the harbor. It’s going to help Penn Station. It’s going to help BWI. It’s going to help the toll booths that people are going to come through tolls to come to Camden Yards and pay to park and be here and stay afterward and get a beer and go to the rusty scupper and chase girls at the Baja Beach Club. Oh, that was me the rings at Hooters. That was me back in the day, it was going to do all of that. And somewhere along the line, Angelo’s got super greedy. I was explaining to my pal Todd, rate him it was here this weekend about the Hilton being built on that land. And Angelo’s wanted the city screwed it all up, and the city screwed it up royally, as a guy who lost his ass on the tax base living in the city for 19 years, I can attest to that, but the idea was to lift the boats and everybody made money. It would all channel back. Baseball is so arrogant, broke and and bankrupt of ideas that the. Idea now is we can’t stand on our own. We need to have the real estate piece in order to finance all and that was a bob Kraft model with his mall up and at Gillette Stadium up in Foxboro, where they they built a stadium in the middle of there were, there is no nothing there. It’s in the middle of a cornfield on route one. And the battery model is basically saying what the Padres did, what the Orioles did, maybe what the Indians tried to do, and the Tigers, which was be a civic partner in putting this baseball team down that everybody drinks into. They want a model where they drink it all out. And that was how Angelo’s killed, the sports legends Museum, the jeppy Museum, the harbor, everything, the government buildings, everything around there, because if he couldn’t drink in it, he didn’t want to own it. And the only ones I can see who made any money were the guys over at pickles pub. They, you know, they created the battery model across the street, and the Angeles people absolutely hated that they got all of that money. And that money wasn’t on the inside, like it was at Yawkey Way, at Fenway Park, where we could annex that kind of like Trump annexing, I don’t know, Greenland, or Canada or Mexico or something like that. And I think that that model in Baltimore is a very dangerous model in a lot of ways. To say the reason you’re here was to lift everything in the blocks around it, not to usurp it and build, you know, a compound around how much money you can make, because it worked in Atlanta. I don’t know, Pete, if that’s your idea and that’s your model times 30 or times the 15 problems you have, including Las Vegas, including whatever Sacramento is going to be in all of these new markets, Portland, that you’re going to need to steal, whatever next team there’s going to be. I just, I just don’t see a thriving industry. And you know, I did 30 ballparks in 30 days 10 years ago. And I go back now, and I say, Where in these places has it gotten stronger because of this, Cincinnati built a battery against the water with their new stadium as well. And I just, I don’t see it as sustainable. I as a I’m not um, symbolist or some economic person, but like, I’ve been to all these places and sniffed around as a reporter, as a tourist, as a fan, as you know, all of that in season, out of season. I’m still waiting for the first good baseball idea, and I was really hopeful that the Rubenstein people will come in here and be really smart. And from the outside, I’d love to hear your observations of what you see of this, because I’m on the inside and man, the reason I have you on is the rays are coming here this week. The rays are in a panda race. The Orioles are in this close to being in sell off mode if they get swept this weekend.
Pete Williams 42:52
Yeah. And so I think you’re right when you look at this model. And in going back to the Larry Latino days, he had to do a big sales job just to get the city or the state to finance the stadium. Now we’re starting with the negotiations. Oh, it’s just a given city and county and state you are going to pay for the stadium and you are going to give us the development rights to everything around it, you know. Larry lakino was arguing, hey, build the stadium, and then you can benefit from everything that you can build around it, you know, so Larry, you know, when he helped get the San Diego stadium built, yeah, it was kind of inching its way toward the battery. He didn’t have much to work with in Fenway Park, they didn’t have much to build around. But he, he did what he could, and did a nice job of of converting that. But I think if he was still with us today and and, you know, signed as a consultant for for Well, I don’t think Baltimore will be in the mix, but say Tampa Bay hired him as a consultant of some sort, then yes, I think he would be pressing for the battery model as well. Is that good for baseball? Is that a good business model for the game? No, of course not. It’s just a good business model for the billionaires and private equity types that are taking over and buying into baseball teams. So, yes, I don’t think there is an answer. You can try Theo Epstein did a great job improving the on field product several years ago. I think it’s great that we have more base stealing, we have we have the pitch clock and that sort of things. The games are now at 210 rather than 245 that helps. But yeah, the product itself, it’s just not there. And do I have any ideas for how Baltimore is going to improve? No, I don’t. And then, so that’s that’s the tragedy of it, when I look at what that was in the 90s, when Baltimore kind of surprised the world, shocked the world with this new stadium business model, and thus, you know, crushed baseball on the field and off business wise, and was the most profitable teams throughout the 90s, averaging, what, 3.5 6 million fans a season, which is staggering, and to think that they can’t even be anywhere close to that, and they’ve gone from what was perceived, at least from a baseball standpoint, to be a big market, not a big market, but a big revenue team for the longest time. And. Into where they are now, where they’re, you know, essentially they’re, they’re not Tampa Bay revenue wise, and there’s been other factors involved, but they’re, they’re in a far worse place than we are here in Tampa Bay, even with the roof blown off the drop. Pete,
Nestor Aparicio 45:13
uh, we’ve been at it 45 minutes, and I’ll just say it started right at the beginning, which is, you got a new owner coming. There’s hope, there’s hope, there’s lots of hope. I went through that last year, you know, and now that I sit here this year and I’m like, these people have no idea what they’re doing, and I know the people in New York that run Major League Baseball don’t really, I mean, they’re playing games in Australia and Japan and all these places, and they can’t figure out that their own franchises, they can’t figure out the athletics, right? I mean, that’s another story unto itself. That’s that’s a two decade mess like and that’s not even close to being sorted out. They moved the team, and they have nowhere to go with it. And I just one of my dear friends with the old sports editor the Sacramento Bee Tom Cousins. He came on a couple weeks ago, and he’s a bleeding heart Oriole fan, and he lives in Sacramento, but he paid $90 for tickets that day, and there were $10 at game time because he bought into the early Barbra Streisand model of Get your tickets now and they’ll be $5 later, and nobody in Sacramento wants it either. I mean, it’s like hot potato to some degree, which I guess it’s important that Tampa sells all 12,000 of their seats all year long. Is that, is that in the cards because it was 10 bucks to get in last week when the Orioles played there.
Pete Williams 46:25
Yeah. I mean, you could just wait till game time. That’s, that’s what people do you just now that we all have phones and we can wait outside until three minutes before first pitch, and we’re like, oh, tickets are $9 Now, click. Let’s do that. Yeah, I was the idiot who, on the second game of the season against the pirates, I paid $65 face value for tickets, and then I thought, Oh, I could have waited and paid $9 and so that’s what you do now. And so I pity the poor people who bought, who bought into the the idea that I better buy season tickets, because that’s the only way I’m going to see the rays this year. So they paid a staggering amount for those, those season tickets in Steinbrenner field. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. I just, I think it would be so insane, and it’s a possibility that they could play the World Series at Steinbrenner field this year with 10,500 seats. Imagine how hot those tickets are going to be. And not only that, imagine if the rays win the World Series in Steinbrenner field. George Steinbrenner, whose grave site is eight miles away. People think he’s buried in New York. No, he has a gigantic mausoleum in Pasco, county, of all places, because that’s where his kids put him. Imagine that he’d be rolling over in that mausoleum if, in Steinbrenner field, the rays win the World Series on November 1, or whatever it’s going to be. And here he is where the Yankees have not won a World Series since he died in 2010 which is no
Nestor Aparicio 47:45
coincidence. You know, if these kids knew anything about, you know, classic cinema, they would have a George Steinbrenner naked model in the clubhouse and be ripping the pieces off of it as they as they go to a championship at Steinbrenner field. Uh, Pete Williams is here. He hates the Yankees, which is why we’ve been friends forever, and is down to Tampa Bay the rays this week, just on the field for the Orioles. You have anything that you have to say about their what’s going on and, you know, obviously lead us down a whole different direction, with pitching and arms falling off, but this has been a precipitous fall, and a bunch of young guys that haven’t panned, and a bunch of pitching that hasn’t worked, and a new ownership that doesn’t get it.
Pete Williams 48:26
Yeah, you think the on field product, it’s, it’s the same nucleus they’ve been developing that 100 games two years ago that won 91 games last year. You think they should keep improving, right? I mean, they’ve, they’ve got brought in some pitchers who, guys who pitched well for the rays, the the ageless, Charlie Morton, Zach Efron, who was here for a while, and so but I mean, it’s, it’s just not happening for them and and part of that’s management. Part of it’s, yeah, some some injuries. But you know, everyone’s injured now. No noone. Noone stays healthy anymore. No one can pitch 200 innings anymore. No one can. No one can play 162 games. No one plays 145 games anymore. Five games anymore, and so. So I don’t know if the the Orioles have any more excuses than anybody else, but the on field product should be a lot better, because they they have a nucleus of young talent, better than at least 20 teams in
Nestor Aparicio 49:14
baseball. They’ve already got the manager fired since then, we’re all managing the team. Pete Williams is here. He is a baseball historian, author, you got anything going on? I mean, your card shark sings 30 years old. I mean, I was going to whip out my Milk Duds Louis Aparicio box here and show you my Kellogg’s cards and do all that stuff. But are you still a nerd about collecting a little bit or No, is that sale for you? No, no,
Pete Williams 49:36
absolutely. I think when you live in Florida for as long as I do, where you don’t have basements, you don’t have addicts, you have the threat of flooding taking out your house and your house and whatever. You tend to pare down your collection by necessity. And I’m glad I have, I have held on to some things, but I think with my book Card Sharks, which chronicled the growth of the sports card business, especially the upper deck company, that book celebrated its 30th anniversary in April, and I think they are finally shot. Dropping the the movie rights to it, which, which would be pretty exciting if we can find some sort of young actor, like a mouse teller type, I think, to play Richard McWilliam. Richard McWilliam had a real cheesy mustache and and Miles Teller and Top Gun Maverick had a real cheesy mustache, like he could be Richard McWilliams. So we’ll see. Will there be a movie made? Will there be a documentary made of it? I don’t know, but I look forward to that. And the wheels of Hollywood turn very slowly, but who knows, maybe someday we’ll see Card Sharks, the movie. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 50:28
the memorabilia business is still there, and it keeps me alive some days, because sometimes it’s like Seinfeld man. It’s just I’m in love with the laundry, sometimes with old stuff, but I wish we had more meat on the bone here in the middle of the heat of june of a pennant race, Pete Williams is down at Tampa living the good life, doing what I should have done 30 years ago, sold it all off to the mosquitoes and the outdoor of baseball. Well, I hope you get to a few more games at Steinbrenner field, and I hope that you pick the Knights when it’s not 94 and and balmy and chance of rain, you know, we’ll try. Pete Williams is here. I love having him on. I only get him on once a year, and I keep him too long and run him around a little bit, but he needs to be run a little bit more because he’s more athletic than me. Anyway, he’s got more of a more endurance and endurance athlete. Pete Williams, I’m just an endurance sports radio guy here eating crab cakes out on the Maryland crab cake torch. All brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. We’re going to be at deepest Qualis on the eighth. That’s going to be legendary in the morning. We’re going to do that before it gets too hot, sure we are. And then on the 10th, we’re going to be inside at Costas, at Timonium, at the racetrack, at the new location, we’re going to be at 1623 brewing at Eldersburg. I am doing 27 of my favorite things to eat, 27 days in the month of August for our 27 years of doing what I love, which is this talking baseball. We are, W, N, S, D, AM, 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop bitching about the Orioles being in last place, because that’s who we are. We’re Baltimore positive. Yeah.
