Baseball league rejects city's bid

The amateur league cited problems with Clearwater's Jack Russell Stadium. Two other Florida cities are still among relocation possibilities.

By LEON M. TUCKER
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 12, 2001

CLEARWATER -- Clearwater has been eliminated as a potential home for the national organization that oversees amateur baseball.

Officials with Tucson, Ariz.-based USA Baseball said not only were there problems with moving to Clearwater's Jack Russell Stadium, but two other Florida cities submitted better bids -- Kissimmee and West Palm Beach.

"The facility is an old stadium and didn't have the number of other facilities concentrated in a way that is best suited for our needs," said Jack Kelly, chairman of the relocation committee for USA Baseball. "There was also some concerns about what would happen to the stadium and who will take care of it in the future."

In addition to the two Florida cities, sites still in the running are Atlanta, Aberdeen, Md., and the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina.

"Any one of those cities we match up against very well, if not better," said John Giantonio, director of sports for the St. Petersburg Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. "It may be that USA Baseball was looking at the bid from a different perspective than what we may have emphasized."

With input from the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, the Clearwater Chamber of Commerce, the Philadelphia Phillies and the city of Clearwater, Giantonio's office put together a packet designed to convince the organization to move to the gulf coast.

The Phillies, whose spring training program occupies the Jack Russell complex, will vacate in 2003 for a new complex the city is building for the team.

In the bid, the visitors bureau estimates that about 8,000 additional hotel rooms could be sold each year if USA Baseball moved to town. At an average rate of $78 per night, that would translate into about $624,000 flowing into the local economy.

And as an added incentive, the city considered letting the organization use the Phillies' new $22-million facility for its international games that draw larger crowds.

"We were kind of shocked because we thought we would have definitely been a finalist city," Giantonio said. "We put together the best bid we thought we could."

For the past four years, USA Baseball has operated in Arizona overseeing amateur baseball and assembling the U.S. Olympic baseball team for competition in the summer games.

One reason the organization has cited for wanting to leave Tucson is the expense for teams to fly there and the lack of local support.

"We are looking for a community that will really adopt USA Baseball and to be an important part of the community," Kelly said. "The bigger the city and more Major League it is, the more difficult that will be to achieve."

But Kelly said the group left Atlanta, home of Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves, in the group to offer diversity in the choices.

In 1978, Congress created USA Baseball to represent amateur baseball in America. Because many of the country's amateur baseball organizations are affiliated with USA Baseball, the organization oversees more than 19-million players.

And despite not making it onto the list of five finalists still in the running, the Giantonio said the city doesn't plan to bench its bid yet.

"I still feel so strongly about our bid that, until the ink dries, the opportunity still exists," he said. "Two, three or four months down the line, things may change."

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