Yankee Stadium is in its last season; it lasted 85 years. The Red Sox will preserve Fenway Park, the oldest active Major League Baseball stadium, built in 1912, rather than replace it. The Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals played in their stadiums an average of 35 years before building new ones.
Tropicana Field, in St. Petersburg, Fla., home of the Tampa Bay Rays, is young by comparison, just 18 years old. Already, though, people are calling for its replacement.
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, MLB commissioner Bud Selig said the Trop “just can't produce the revenue you need to be competitive on a year-in and year-out basis.”
The Trop was built in 1990. In 1995, it landed an expansion team called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays — now called the Tampa Bay Rays. Since November 2007, the team has been seeking support for a new $450 million waterfront stadium, open air with a retractable fabric roof, to be built on the site of Progress Energy Park, formerly Al Lang Field.
A referendum on the project was scheduled for November, but on June 24 Rays President Matt Silverman withdrew the organization’s request for a vote this fall. It’s unclear whether the team still will pursue a new stadium.
St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chairman Jeff Danner said the stadium debate has garnered the city’s largest public hearings in at least a decade, sometimes drawing more than 200 residents.
And Ferg’s Sports Bar and Grill, across a parking lot from the Trop, also is home to the debate. Rays fans traditionally meet there before and after the games.
Sixteen years ago, owner Mark Ferguson, 51, converted an old gas station into a bar and initially sold only beer and wine. Since then he has expanded the bar, which, with the parking lot, now takes up a city block.
But the debate over the stadium, which has been raging for months, is not likely to subside. Yard signs are everywhere. Red ones exclaim, “No NEW Waterfront $tadium!” The blue ones rebut, “Let’s Build The Ballpark.”
Today, it is an institution. There are five rooms in all: four downstairs and one upstairs. Both levels have covered patios. The inside walls are covered with sports memorabilia, mounted newspaper articles, old sports equipment and license plates from many states. Customers can see a television from anywhere in the bar except the bathroom.
On the downstairs patio, beer banners cover the walls and hang from the rafters. The biggest reads, “Welcome to Fergs Sports Bar,” in red, and below it, in blue, is “Your Home For Major League Baseball.”
The polyurethane-coated countertops are inlaid with newspaper clips, pictures and mementos, including a 1999 NCAA Final Four parking permit.
Even though his is the closest bar to the stadium, Ferguson said he feels the new ballpark would be better for the city and fans because of the number of entertainment options that would surround a downtown waterfront stadium.
“For a fan, there is only one place to go,” Ferguson said. “I love that. But with the new stadium, there will be 20 or 30 places to go.”
If the city builds the new stadium, Ferguson said he plans to shuttle fans between his bar and the waterfront. He would also open a new location, which he’d call Ferg’s East.
Pregame
On June 21, fans gather at Ferg’s before the Rays play the Astros.
Manny Carrera, 21, a rancher from Brooksville, Fla., stands on the downstairs patio watching television. Amid a crowd of Rays shirts and hat, he’s wearing a black cowboy hat and brown cowboy boots. This is his first MLB game.
Carrera came to town early to get tickets and wings. “I like them better than Hooters’ wings,” he said. “They already got me coming down to another game. We’ll come down for the first game of the Boston series.”
Carrera’s best friend, Ryan Kress, 23, joins him on the patio.
“Every time I come to a game, I show up early, buy my tickets and come here,” Kress said. This is the first time he brought Carrera to Ferg’s.
Game time
Outside the Trop, the rain falls steadily. Inside, it’s dry. Bright, colorful cartoons of players hang from the walls. Giant, fluorescent lights illuminate the field.
Jason Bowrey, 29, stands on the upper deck drinking a beer and eating fries. Bowrey said he has attended about 10 Rays games each season for the past three years.
“I don’t come to a lot of games,” Bowrey said, “but I still know they need a new stadium.” He doesn’t think weather is an issue. “I’m from New York,” Bowrey said. “It’s cold as hell there, and they make it to the playoffs, like, every year.” Bowrey loves the Rays but only until they play the Yankees. That team has gone to the playoffs every year since 1995.
Then he stops midsentence, hearing the crack of a bat. Justin Ruggiano, a Rays outfielder, hits a solo home run in the fifth inning to put the team up 2-1 over the Astros.
“You can’t deny a team that’s playing well,” Bowrey said.
At the bottom of the ninth inning that day, the bases are loaded and the Rays are down 3-2 with no outs. Gabe Gross steps up to the plate and hits a double between the third baseman and left fielder. The ball lands inches inside the foul line. The Rays score two runs. Rays, 4; Astros, 3. The crowd roars. The team charges the field.
Postgame
Kool and The Gang play a concert in right field after the game. Later, some of the fans head to Ferg’s, where Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction” blares over the speakers on the patio. The dance floor is shoulder-to-shoulder. Inside, rock music plays from the jukebox.
Sitting at the bar, Steve Carter said he likes the stadium where it is. He thinks the city can’t afford to build a new one. He also thinks weather is an issue.
“If we would have had that game in a outdoor stadium,” Carter said, “it would have been canceled, the concert would have been canceled, and we would not have had any of that.”
Carter said he has had some special moments at the Trop.
“To see Wade Boggs’ 3,000th hit. Being there and seeing it is something you don’t get to see every day,” Carter said. “By tearing the stadium down, that part of history will be gone.”
There’s history to be preserved at Al Lang Field, too, Carter said.
“It has been there for decades,” Carter said. “It’s kind of like Yankee stadium, the house that Ruth built. They both had lots of history.”
Tahlia Ganser contributed to this report.