Another crushing blow for Rays fans, but is there hope?

Obviously, unless you've been living under a rock, the big news this week was the Rays' decision to back off from the stadium deal they originally agreed to with the City of St. Pete and Pinellas County.

We'll get to that in a second, with all of the disappointment and disgust that came with it, but today there was more news in the weird, all-over-the-place saga, as there have been reports that the Rays pitched a plan to upgrade the Trop and remain there for the next 13 seasons.

While this might not be ideal, and was very poorly received by local leaders due to the Rays' asking for $200 million each from the City and County to make major upgrades to the Trop and try to turn it into a state-of-the-art facility, at least it's better than perhaps the alternative, the Rays simply packing up and leaving.

But is this a genuine attempt to stay, or, like the poorly-thought-out and ill-fated Sister City concept, another ruse to appease Rob Manfred and MLB to give the Rays an opportunity to relocate like the formerly Oakland Athletics?

Only time will tell, but let's get into the awful statement the Rays released this past week, especially as the team gears up for Opening Day and the beginning to the season.

The release wasn't a shock or a surprise, as the Rays had been broadcasting their intentions to back out of this deal for quite some time due to the delay in the vote caused by Pinellas County to approve bonds.

But it was still another very depressing development in a sad case of the rich, big, bad sports team trying to bully and threaten their way into securing public funds from incompetent local government officials to pay for a privately owned and profitable stadium.

So now, instead of the original plan, which was allegedly costing the Rays a bunch of "overruns" that were never proven or substantiated by the team, the Rays are proposing for the city and county to pay for massive repairs to an ugly, broken stadium that was ravaged by the recent hurricane.

This seems like another disingenuous attempt by a team to claim to their overlords that they "did everything they could" (shoutout to the Athletics for doing the same thing) while they stab everyone in the back and move to Nashville or any other market open to a baseball team.

Shoutout to Stu and the boys, they truly have done a great job in ruining baseball for many Tampa Bay baseball fans, doing even more disservice to a community recently hammered by a brutal hurricane and after years of sitting in the bottom third of baseball in payroll, trading away any star or fan-favorite player in the name of efficiency and being cheap.

So glad the Rays are "Here to Stay" like they promised.