The remote possibility that the Florida Marlins would relocate to San Antonio has come to naught as the Texas city rescinded its offer to pledge $200 million to build a stadium. MLB said it could not meet the city's deadline for a deal. Baseball's chief operating office, Bob DuPuy, sent a letter to Nelson Wolff (the man behind San Antonio's efforts) thanking the city "for their interest in the team" (that's my favorite part) adding that baseball "is working closely with the Marlins to secure a stadium in Florida."

~Adam

I've heard OKC is in the hunt for the Marlins as well. Though I don't know how serious their efforts are at this time.

OKC is nowhere near being a big enough metro area to support a major league team. What city next? Boise???

Hopefully it will work in Hialeah for the Marlins park...San Antonio is just too small, as are OKC and Charlotte. They'd be looking at another Kansas City...

San Antonio is plenty big enough to support a MLB team, especially since it's so close to Austin, another fairly large Texas city with a lot of baseball fans.

These "threats" to move are just used to leverage a new stadium deal. Charlotte gets thrown out there every time a city wants a new deal. I think there was even a plan drawn up this time for a stadium uptown, even though there is also talk for a minor league stadium uptown. There was even someone locally who said he was working with the Marlins.

Of course, when the local media contacted the Marlins, they knew nothing of the local guy in Charlotte, but did say they were talking to San Antonio and Portland.

And as for OKC...there was speculation that Charlotte wasn't big enough to support a major league team, and wouldn't be, population wise, for at least another 10 years. I don't know for certain, but isn't OKC smaller than Charlotte and isn't the metro area much smaller?

Good point. Is Butte available?

Good point, considering San Antonio is, if I recall correctly, the 10th largest city in the country.

I think this is just a ploy to get some sort of major league sports club if the Hornets return to New Orleans.

OKC has certainly shown itself well to be a major league sports market if what has happened at the Ford Center is any indication.

Portland is the largest Metro Area without a team, at 2,064,336

That's larger than Cincinnati, KC, and Milwaukee. Of course, fan bases and TV markets extend beyond the metro areas, so Milwaukee can draw from almost all of Wisconsin, and Portland would likely attract fans from throughout Oregon.

The next largest non-MLB big city/metro areas (not counting weird conglomerates like Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario) are:

Sacramento 2,016,702
Orlando 1,861,707
San Antonio 1,854,050
Columbus 1,693,906
Las Vegas 1,650,671
Indianapolis 1,644,250
Charlotte 1,474,734
Austin 1,412,271
Nashville 1,395,879
New Orleans 1,319,589

Buffalo is even further down the list. OKC is below that. Again, you get to draw from the entire state if you're in OKC, but just because a town is big enough to support a basketball team (see Salt Lake City) doesn't mean it's nearly large enough to support a baseball team. It's twice as many games, and quite a few more seats to fill, and the star system isn't nearly as powerful a draw if your team suck (people will pay to see Shaq month in advance ... or LeBron, or Kobe, or Iverson ... I can't say the same about MLBers).

So I guess logic tells us to move the Marlins to Portland! Interestingly, this begs a significant question of realignment, which has to happen at some point because it's untenable, in my opinion, to have six teams in the NL Central and only 4 in the AL West -- huge advantage for those 4 teams, who go into the season with a much better chance of making the playoffs than any of the Central teams. Likely any realignment is going to include the ADDITION of two more teams, so MLB is going to have to figure out how to make that financially feasible. Meaning OKC, Charlotte, and even Miami still have to be considered in the running.

But it's something like the 36th largest TV market, and that is MUCH more important to MLB...Plus I think you over estimate their population a bit...They are actually ranked 29 in population....just looked it up...

[ May 21, 2006, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: MiamiSpartan ]