The Florida Sports Foundation wants Gov. Rick Scott to go to bat for spring training in this state.
And, my guess is, the rookie governor will be eager to step up to the plate, take a whack at calling baseball commissioner Bud Selig and attempt to drive home the need for the 15 teams that train in Florida to do more coast-to-coast traveling for Grapefruit League games.
Even though he knows he'll probably strike out.
Scott was a part owner of the Texas Rangers for a brief time in the 1990s, so he's familiar with how big-league franchises operate.
He knows that teams want to make money off spring training. He knows baseball executives and managers don't want to waste time on the road. He knows front-line players won't travel any more than necessary and that they'll do whatever they can to avoid overnight trips.
But he also knows he needs to try -- especially now, with Florida's economy still sagging amid an historic real-estate collapse and the Florida Sports Foundation publicly seeking his help.
"We're going to ask Gov. Scott to make a phone call to help us out," FSF president Larry Pendleton told a state House subcommittee last week, when he correctly argued that the teams' reluctance to travel across the state for Grapefruit League games is hurting the popularity of spring training in Florida. "He's a former baseball owner, so I think he understands and knows some of the people."
And, certainly, there's no good reason for Scott not to phone Selig and make a case for Florida, which, across the past 15 years, has lost too many teams to the burgeoning, spring-training Mecca in Arizona.
But it won't do any good.
Remember when only eight teams trained in the desert? Now there are 15, same as Florida.
The reason? Arizona has spent millions of tourism dollars to lure and/or keep teams in the Phoenix area, where new spring-training complexes have been built and existing facilities have been renovated. Also, teams prefer the geographical convenience of the Cactus League, where travel time for games rarely exceeds an hour.
In the Grapefruit League, a trip from Fort Myers for the Twins or Red Sox to Viera to play the Nationals can take four hours. Even on those rare occasions when teams do venture across the state -- the New York Yankees will travel from Tampa to the east coast only once this spring -- most of their marquee players stay home.
Eight of the Florida-based teams are clustered along the southwest coast. Three are in the central part of the state. Only four remain on the I-95 corridor.
And though the New York Mets will take an overnight trip to Fort Myers to play against Minnesota and Boston -- the Red Sox will visit the Mets here on March 6 -- teams on both coasts spend most of the spring playing close to home.
The FSF wants to change that, using Scott as the state's designated hitter.
At least he'll go down swinging.
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