I don't know about moving the games to Tampa or Hillsborough. I live in Tampa and I enjoy going to the Trop whenever I can get away.

It's rather nice that I can treat my wife to a day on the Pier, dinner @ Baywalk and then a baseball game. The location is just fine and over the years I have grown to love the surrounding areas to the point I tried briefly to buy a home in the area.

Last time I check Roger Clemens drew a decent showing when he last pitched at the Trop.

I don't think it's a fair estimate to judge Clemens game against the Rays. Clemens is a future hall of famer, and arguably one of the best of the modern era of baseball.

Hey, I was at the game and I thought 13,000 was a honestest quote. The fans will come. How many times beside tonight have the Tampa Yankees come close to matching the Trop in attendance?
Let's put it this way; how many times do you see the Tampa Yankees score in the papers? Or how many times do you see the Tampa Yankees on the local news.

The Bucs and Bolts draw well because the WIN. Remember when the bolts we perennial losers? You could get tickets to the game on the ground. When the Bolts made their playoff run in 1996, they sold out the Thunderdome (later to be known as the Trop.)

If we move the Rays from the Trop I think we would be losing a bit of connection with the area. The Tampa Bay area has a lot more to offer then just Tampa. I guarantee you, the Rays make it to the playoffs they would sell out quicker then you can say "band wagon."

Go Rays!

For several reasons, including......

1. They are already paying off large construction costs with respect to the Ice Palace and Raymond James Stadium, the latter of which was very controversial.
2. There is still 20 years left on Tropicana Field's lease. There is no way that the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County will void that lease if the Rays move to Hillsborough County. And it would be next to impossible for the Rays to incur all the debt that would result from having to pay off the rest of the debt on the lease.
3. While a location in Hillsborough County at the Fairgrounds location would provide reasonable 100 mile access to more people, a lot of that encompasses rural Central Florida land that is not in the Tampa Bay market. You are essentially making your ballpark, with traffic time included, equidistant between rural Polk County and heavily urbanized Pinellas County, and that won't fly.
4. Further, the traffic situation in Hillsborough County is just far worse. Even with recent improvements along I-4 (that will inevitably be "improving" for the next 50 years), traffic still encounters major snarls in the Ybor, Downtown, and Memorial Highway areas. And I doubt the infrastructure improvments near Tampa Airport are going to much affect the last snarl up. I-275 in Pinellas County really slows down in only one location, and that is in the corridor between Gandy and Roosevelt.

The only Tampa site I can see working is on the Dale Mabry corridor near where RayJay is, and that is already taken up by another ballpark. I have often grappled with the issue of the new Rays ballpark being built at the Legends Field site. Would the destruction of that disgusting Yankee cesspool compensate for losing my team to another county? Alas, no. A site at that location would be best for Hillsborough, but because of the other factors listed above, that won't happen. You probably aren't getting a stadium in either Downtown, St. Pete or Tampa, because of land costs, parking infrastructure issues, and land availability.

That all said, where would be the best place for a new stadium site? I'm going to echo something that I have heard before over at RaysBB in discussions, as well as with my brother, and I'll say that the perfect site would be at the old Pinellas County landfill near Roosevelt. This would be a good option because...

1. It's proximity to the Howard Frankland Bridge mitigates the commute from Tampa being a major problem.
2. Unlike lots of Pinellas County, there is a large quantity of land available.
3. It is near a major transportation junction at the 275-Roosevelt-118th St. interchange
4. Pinellas County will give away the land for free
5. There is a large development going on across the street as well as at the Carilon office park area, which means that there is major corporate dollars and a large residential population within a 10 minute commute. Obviously this would not be a neighborhood ballpark that you could walk to, but  a few pedestrian bridges and the advent of the automobile should circumvent that problem. Think of all the corporations just blocks away. Danka, Jabil Circuit, ValPak, Avaya, Bright House, HSN,  that is a large workforce looking for things to do after work, and that is a lot of corporate $$$ within a very short distance.

The only problem is that the landfill site needs to be cleaned up, something which would cost the Rays or any other developer who wants to go there about $30 million to do. However a ballpark would be the best way to make that money back. Ultimately a structure is going to cost lots of money wherever you build it, but all things considered, I think this would be the best site.