The Indians are Coming (yet again)

I’m tempted to put it down a null news day. Either that or we just can’t have a baseball season without THE rumors. You know…the ones about the Cleveland Indians moving their spring training to Southwest Florida? No really, we do this every year.

They’ve tried Collier County, they’ve tried Charlotte County, they’ve tried Lee County – or at least, the City of Fort Myers – where they almost got lucky with an offer to renovate Terry Park for them. Almost, but not quite.

Now they’re back and they’re talking to Cape Coral. The Fort Myers News Press broke a story on Wednesday that two officials (unnamed) from the Indians were in town, met with City officials and toured the city and some potential sites, including the 211-acre Festival Park site in the North Cape area. Currently there are no further meetings planned between the two parties and team spokesman Vice President Bob Dibiasio was unavailable for comment.

Obviously there are a number of issues that would need to be dealt with in building a training facility for the Tribe, one of which would be securing money from the State of Florida, which as been dragging its feet over money for professional sports facilities such as the one the Florida Marlins would like built for it.

However, such a facility, if built and managed properly, such as the Lee County Sportsplex in South Fort Myers, would certainly be a boon to the community.

Unfortunately, too many area residents equate baseball stadium with the “white elephant on Edison” where the Red Sox play. Built by the City of Fort Myers, it was taken over in 2003 by Lee County in an effort to shed operating and renovation costs. The debt structure on the stadium won’t be paid off until 2023, and unlike the Lee County complex, it is not used for other events. The closest that it’s come to an outside event happened just this month when Beasley Broadcasting held a concert headlined by the band Staind in the adjacent parking lot area of City of Palms Park. They managed to time the event for the night before Red Sox Spring Training tickets went on sale, and there were several run-ins and one arrest associated with concert goers harassing fans that were waiting in line overnight. It should be noted that while the Red Sox hired security for the stadium, they did not provide any sort of security to those people waiting in line outside of the stadium. (This is the second time there have been ill-considered incidents involved with Red Sox ticket sales. Last year, a near riot occurred when fans discovered that some seats had been pre-sold over the internet.)

Now, note, I wouldn’t mind having the Tribe here. Heck, if you told me they were coming in the area and were going to participate in Gulf Coast League, I’d be all for it. But the Tribe doesn’t participate in GCL now, preferring to use two short season rookie teams. Still, they’d be in on instructional league ball…well, I’ll consider that later. Right now the entire issue is so tentative, that it seemed even silly for me to have the papers making such a fuss about it. After all, if third time wasn’t the charm, what makes anyone think that the fourth go around is going to be any more successful?

The related stories on this issue:

Cleveland Indians eye Cape as possible spring site
Cleveland Indians scout training site in Cape Coral
Indians looking at Cape Coral for new spring training home