Baseball Hall of Famer Pushes Florida City as Possible Rays Relocation Site

Baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin is the new face of a group trying to bring a Major League Baseball team to Orlando, Florida’s third-most populous urban area.

Could the Tampa Bay Rays be that team?

Larkin spoke at a press conference in Orlando on Wednesday as the spokesperson for a group called the “Orlando Dreamers,” which is hoping to either attract an expansion team or have an existing franchise relocate to the area.

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Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has often stated his desire to delay expansion until two teams — the Oakland A’s and the Tampa Bay Rays — are settled in long-term homes.

For now, both clubs are parked in short-term limbo — the A’s in Sacramento, the Rays in Tampa — while they await construction on new ballparks.

Given the Rays’ proximity to Orlando, and the precarious state of their former and future fields, they’re a logical candidate to at least consider relocation. Tampa and Orlando are separated by about 80 miles, less than two hours by car.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said earlier this week he hasn’t decided what he will do with respect to the team’s new stadium project, whose funding sources have come under question ever since Hurricane Milton destroyed the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.

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Colleen Wright of the Tampa Bay Times notes that the Rays have until March 31 to move forward with a deal struck last summer with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County to build a $1.3 billion stadium on the Tropicana Field site.

According to Wright, Jim Schnorf, co-founder of the Orlando Dreamers group, said if the Rays can’t work out the situation with local officials, “Orlando would be a logical place for them to land at that point.”

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Larkin said during Wednesday’s news conference in Orlando that he is “‘all-in’ with both feet to help attract a franchise to the city.”

Schnorf, who co-founded the Dreamers’ effort with late Magic co-founder Pat Williams, said that he has “already secured verbal commitments of nearly” $500 million from minority investors and that he “may have a majority owner ready to join the effort and commit half the money to build a privately funded domed stadium.”

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The quest to bring MLB to Orlando predates Larkin’s interest, but the longtime Cincinnati Reds shortstop adds a meaningful voice to the conversation since he’s well-known among baseball fans.

Larkin told an Orlando television station that while acquiring the Rays is “an option,” his pitch is not to acquire or relocate the Rays.

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