The Rays are very excited about their new stadium

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The Tampa Bay Rays are desperate for a new stadium, and they’ve taken another step on the journey to build themselves a fancy new home. The Rays released their buzzword-laden wish list to the public just before meeting with a committee of local officials to discuss possible locations for their future park. The wish list, released 39 days before its due date and given the boring name “New Ballpark Site Evaluation Process Document,” paints quite a picture. They want their new stadium to be “adapted to the evolving fan,” that evolution being “from spectator culture to participant culture.” Since technology has changed how fans interact with the game (not to mention how they interact with other fans), they want their new ballpark to reflect that. The document is filled with great ideas that also happen to be notoriously hard-to-execute concepts, like interconnectedness and authenticity. (Thankfully, they have a bit of time to figure all this out.)

The Rays probably had no problem coming up with all those exciting ideas, since their current stadium is the opposite of everything in that document. Their attendance has always been problematically low, and one of the reasons is the location of Tropicana Field. While their team is called the Tampa Bay Rays, the Trop is located in St. Petersburg, 20 miles from Tampa itself. That’s not exactly a quick jaunt. Tropicana Field isn’t a dream to play in, either. Their indoor stadium has problematic catwalks -- yes, catwalks, for some reason -- that disturb the path of airborne baseballs, and sometimes even eat them whole. Everything in that proposal is what they don’t have now, from location requirements to ballpark designs that do not involve catwalks.

Of course, there’s the small matter of who’s going to pay for this glorious new center of Rays excellence. The team already has some idea, as they specifically mentioned that a “public-private partnership” is vital to their plans. If this sounds familiar, it’s because both the Marlins and the Braves have used this model for their new stadiums. Considering how much criticism was heaped on the Marlins for their stadium deal, the Rays may want to steer clear of the Marlins’ model of ballpark financing. That way, they won’t bilk a city out of millions of dollars and they’re even closer to getting the catwalk-free stadium they deserve.