This is the true, complicated story of the decades-long battle to bring a baseball team to Florida's West Coast. Back in print for the first time in two decades, Bob Andelman's detailed investigation has been enhanced with hundreds of political cartoons and photos that illustrate the community's sometimes brutal campaign, as well as an all-new introduction by best-selling sportswriter Peter Golenbock and an afterword by award-winning Tampa Bay Times sports columnist Gary Shelton. Plus, interviews with original Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise owner Vincent J. Naimoli and the man to whom he sold managing interest in the team, Stuart Sternberg.
No baseball, business, or community development bookshelf should be without this unique story.
PRAISE FOR STADIUM FOR RENT (First Edition)
"Journalist Bob Andelman tells in painful detail how close (Tampa Bay) came to winning... Recommended for serious sports collection."
- Morey Berger, Library Journal
"Andelman points a finger not at the bay area's civic leaders but at the panjandrums of baseball. He provides an impeccably researched play-by-play of every inning of this high-stakes game in which the home team has been shut out... The story is compelling, and in Andelman's hands, it's masterfully organized and written."
- Tom Chase, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine
"A phenomenal read. The guy did his research... I became so engrossed, I couldn't put it down.. a superb job on how he put it together."
- Erica Stuart, associate producer, 60 Minutes, CBS-TV
"Andelman put it in perspective."
- Tom McEwen, "The Morning After," Tampa Tribune
"Andelman tells the bittersweet, folly-filled tale of Tampa Bay's courtship of a major league franchise-the Florida White Sox, perhaps, or the St. Petersburg Marlins. St. Petersburg, in particular, just couldn't take no for an answer and built a beautiful stadium, despite a lack of encouragement from Major League Baseball. As it was probably always destined to do, the franchise went to Miami, and St. Petersburg's stadium is the elaborate home to tractor-pulls."
- John Mort, Booklist
"A work that could cause an iceberg to boil. It has everything but a happy ending, rattling off the aggravation we've endured here in the clinical manner of an autopsy."
- Joe Henderson, Tampa Tribune
"Awesome."
- Tedd Webb, 970 WFLA Radio
"In Stadium For Rent, Bob Andelman details St. Petersburg's journey from stalking horse to major league market with great skill and attention to detail. It's impossible to fully grasp the impact of the worst-to-first AL pennant winners of 2008 without learning how they came into existence."
- Jonah Keri, author of The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First
"A home run... If you think there was a lot of public game-playing (if you'll pardon the pun) going on while the City of St. Petersburg kept getting the short shrift, you should read the book to see what really went on."
- John J. Tischner, Pinellas County Review
"A finely detailed account of this region's dubious distinction for taking brush-back pitch after brush-back pitch from the denizens of the diamond... It isn't a pretty story. It isn't even ugly. Just pathetic. Stadium For Rent is a good, albeit frustrating read."
- Dan Ruth, Tampa Tribune
"The best parts of the book are Andelman's portrayals of personalities who led the baseball effort. Among them: Jack Lake, the cantankerous newspaper manager obsessed with getting baseball; Frank Morsani, the remarkably baseball-naive car dealer; and Rick Dodge, the steel-willed assistant city manager who bounced back after each defeat only to become embroiled in yet another plan."
- E.A. Torriero, San Jose Mercury News
