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I admit, I had to do a little research to get some of the details, but as a kid I remember the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. There are a lot of bad reasons why it’s a bad idea for Major League Baseball to permit the Tampa Bay Rays to play a portion of its schedule in Montreal.
Hint: it’s not going to end well for those who want the Rays to stay in Tampa.
In the fall of 1972, the NBA’s Cincinnati Royals moved to become the KC-O Kings. The mascot was changed to avoid conflict with the still relatively new MLB franchise in Kansas City; those Royals had just completed their fourth season.
The NBA team played 15 games in Omaha in the ‘72-’73 season, as well as the next, before cutting back to 11 games in the 1974-75 season.
After the first season, the novelty of having a pro basketball team in Omaha (about the same size as Fort Wayne, which also used to have an NBA franchise) wore out, and attendance waned. When the league announced the Kings would play all its playoff games in KC, the folks in Omaha decided they weren’t really interested in pro basketball anymore.
The players hated the arrangement: every season there was at least two stories about games in Omaha feeling like road games; the team stayed in hotels (and I’m guessing the accommodations weren’t what players in The League enjoy now) and often taking a three-hour bus ride up Interstate 29 to play, while the opposing team flew in.
On paper, the Kings had two homes. In reality, they had none.
Look, the reason baseball commissioner Rod Manfred and MLB owners have given Rays brass permission to explore the Montreal option is simple and transparent: the stadium situation in St. Petersburg, where the Rays play, has sucked since they broke into the league a couple of decades ago.
As White Sox fans may recall, that teams was said to be considering moving to the Florida west coast until the current ballpark agreement was reached. The construction of what is now Tropicana Field had begun, which prompted Chicago and Illinois officials to put together a public finance package to keep the Sox on the South Side.
MLB is looking to get one of two results: a new stadium in Florida, or one in Montreal.
Many believe had the Expos built a baseball-only stadium, the franchise would have never become the Washington Nationals. One could make the argument that the worst ownership situation in professional sports history also cost Montreal its franchise; MLB actually took over operations of the team in its final years north of the border.
Montreal has been at the top of baseball’s expansion list for years now, but a second city for expansion is tough to find. If Las Vegas built an indoor stadium, it would move up that list quickly. And Vegas has demonstrated its a big-league city over the last decade. Frankly, it’s only a matter of time before it lands an NBA franchise (along with Seattle).
With the Oakland A’s seemingly settling its stadium situation, Tampa is on the clock.
Prediction: baseball will be back in Montreal on a full-time basis in time to open the 2022 season, and open a new ballpark not later than Opening Day 2025.
Incidentally, the Kings were sold and moved to Sacramento 12 years after arriving in Kansas City, and very few sports fans in the midwest really cared. I think the same attitude will come to the Tampa-St. Pete area, if it hasn’t already
This column appears periodically. The author’s views don’t necessarily reflect those of the Times-Union.
