A couple of weeks ago, the Tampa Bay Times reported that former Orlando Magic executive Pat Williams has proposed the Rays move just down the way on I-4 and make Orlando their permanent home. On the surface, it certainly makes more sense than a timeshare between Tampa Bay and Montreal. Standing in the way right now is the fact that Orlando is both a smaller metropolitan market than the Tampa-St. Petersburg area as well as a smaller television market. Still, Williams argues that the potential for tourism boosts and corporate sponsors such as Disney and Universal would be a nice little boon:
Orlando does have some clear advantages. Orange County collects about triple the tourist bed taxes each year than the combined totals of Pinellas and Hillsborough. A move east likely wouldn’t nullify a reportedly lucrative new television contract that the Rays just inked, since the Rays currently broadcast statewide. And there are those big potential corporate sponsors.
For now, though, any potential move would be at least 8 years away and there are more questions than solutions at this point.
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It's ironic, of course, that the Rays are threatening a move seeing as how the Sox similarly used Tampa as leverage to bully their way into a new stadium in the infamous midnight deal on June 30, 1988. While plenty of folks remember that back-and-forth (or are at least familiar with the narrative), there is a lesser-known move which nearly took place two decades previous to 1988: the Chicago White Sox making a move north to become the Milwaukee White Sox.
To understand the impetus for the move, it's necessary to establish some context: the Braves had left Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1965 and car salesman Bud Selig was anxious to bring baseball back to the city. After an exhibition game between the Sox and Twins was a success in 1967, the Sox played 9 official home games in Milwaukee in 1968 and 11 more in 1969, all of which were well-attended. The doomed Seattle Pilots, of course, ultimately helped to quash a move north.
While the franchise experienced a golden era in the 1950s and much of the 1960s, attendance waned even during the pennant stretch of '67. 1968 and 1969 were a disaster --the team finished 67-95 and 68-94, respectively -- and the attendance wasn't much better. This issue was only exacerbated by the fact that the Sox drew nearly half their Chicago total in just the 9 Milwaukee games.
If you want a tl;dr version of the whole story, this article provides a nice summation of the above two links, and a little extra on the results of the Milwaukee home games.
