Trib: "Foster creates divide on Rays"

"Foster creates divide on Rays": a headline so loaded, editors selected a much tamer version for its online edition.

The Tampa Tribune's lead story this Sunday was a piece analyzing how the "mayor's opposition to the team leaving the Trop alienates officials on both sides of bay."

You can make the case that the headlines ring true (as the Trib did), but it's also - on a weekend with no news on the Stadium Saga - the latest example of an issue I reported on several years ago: newspapers attempting to drive the direction of the stadium discussion.

Headline aside, the story was mostly appropriate (with a few facts left out, like the implication multiple Pinellas commissioners apoligized to the Rays for Foster, when only one did).  It also summarizes the Stadium Saga appropriately:

But Sternberg's appearances before the Pinellas and Hillsborough commissions were minor milestones in a yearslong debate, according to Alan Bomstein and Craig Sher, who spent more than a year studying where best to locate a baseball stadium as members of the ABC Coalition.

"I'm not aware of any changes that have actually happened in terms of making progress, and I don't think that's going to happen until Mayor Foster takes a step in another direction," Bomstein said.

Sher, a shopping center developer, called the Rays' meetings with county commissioners "just another small chapter in a very long book."

I've joked with public officials and Rays' execs alike that we're "only in the top of the third" in this nine-inning affair, so anyone hoping for a quick solution to the Stadium Saga is in for a brutal disappointment.