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Extra innings

 
Published June 6, 1991|Updated Oct. 13, 2005

After a frazzling day filled with unsubstantiated rumors, unattributed quotes and unfounded speculation, the baseball world (and the would-be baseball world) is left with just this one solid piece of new information about the National League's expansion plans: Nothing has been decided, and the six communities hoping to win an expansion team are in for an even longer wait than they had expected. If Denver and Miami were a lock, as unattributed and self-serving stories in Denver and Miami reported on Wednesday, the National League would have had no reason to change its original plan to announce the selection of the two new franchise sites on June 12. Instead, the league announced that the decision was being postponed, probably until September.

Expansion committee chairman Doug Danforth,

president of the Pittsburgh Pirates, says the delay is necessary because the other owners need more time to review the complex financial details that the committee provided them only this week. Whatever else may or may not be taking place behind the scenes, Danforth's explanation probably should be taken at face value.

At the very least, the delay in the expansion decision gives the Tampa Bay ownership group more time to provide Major League Baseball, as well as the Tampa Bay community, with further assurances that its bid is as attractive as anyone's, financially and otherwise.

Whatever the relative merits of the communities bidding for baseball, the expansion decision will rest in great part on a judgment of the quality of the six prospective ownership groups. That point was reiterated this week by Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent. "The public tends to think of (the expansion process) as a city competing with a city," the commissioner said, "when in fact it's an ownership group within a city competing with an ownership group within another city."

Tampa Bay has been actively seeking a baseball franchise for at least 14 years. Our area's intrinsic strengths are well established. Our stadium is in place, and the advantages of our location and demographics will not disappear between now and September. What can change during that time, for better or worse, is the makeup and financial stability of the ownership groups representing the six contenders.

Tampa Bay's hopes for baseball are in the handsof a private group of individuals who have a natural desire to keep their business private. However, the group led by Washington attorney Stephen Porter assumed a public trust when it won the right to represent an area that has been waiting for baseball for longer than many local residents care to remember. The Porter group was chosen by baseball over two other groups of local contenders, including one that had long been involved in the pursuit of baseball. That selection was an indication of the extent to which baseball's current owners were impressed by the quality and financial wherewithal of the individuals involved in the Porter group.

However, the local group is now competing against ownership groups in Denver and Miami that have been quite public and active in their efforts to improve the quality of their bids in the eyes of Major League Baseball. The Denver group has added powerful new local investors. Miami's Wayne Huizenga has conducted a relentless public relations campaign that has given his bid an aura of inevitability. Publicly at least, the Porter group has been saying and doing very little.

After having been burned by the ownership group seeking to bring a hockey team to the Florida Suncoast Dome, St. Petersburg officials should need no additional incentive to seek every possible assurance that the Porter group is doing everything in its power to bring baseball here. Beyond that, it wouldn't hurt for the Porter group to offer whatever public reassurance it can to a local community buffeted by waves of disquieting news. None of that will necessarily help Tampa Bay win a baseball team, but it might at least make many local residents feel a little less queasy as they try to endure a process that just keeps getting longer and longer.