Stadium For Rent: Tampa Bay's Quest for Major League Baseball
About this ebook
Back in print for the first time in two decades, Bob Andelman's detailed investigation has been enhanced with hundreds of political cartoons and photos that illustrate the community's sometimes brutal campaign, as well as an all-new introduction by best-selling sportswriter Peter Golenbock and an afterword by award-winning Tampa Bay Times sports columnist Gary Shelton. Plus, interviews with original Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise owner Vincent J. Naimoli and the man to whom he sold managing interest in the team, Stuart Sternberg.
No baseball, business, or community development bookshelf should be without this unique story.
PRAISE FOR STADIUM FOR RENT (First Edition)
“Journalist Bob Andelman tells in painful detail how close (Tampa Bay) came to winning... Recommended for serious sports collection.”
– Morey Berger, Library Journal
“Andelman points a finger not at the bay area’s civic leaders but at the panjandrums of baseball. He provides an impeccably researched play-by-play of every inning of this high-stakes game in which the home team has been shut out... The story is compelling, and in Andelman’s hands, it’s masterfully organized and written.”
– Tom Chase, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine
“A phenomenal read. The guy did his research... I became so engrossed, I couldn’t put it down.. a superb job on how he put it together.”
– Erica Stuart, associate producer, 60 Minutes, CBS-TV
“Andelman put it in perspective.”
– Tom McEwen, “The Morning After,” Tampa Tribune
“Andelman tells the bittersweet, folly-filled tale of Tampa Bay’s courtship of a major league franchise—the Florida White Sox, perhaps, or the St. Petersburg Marlins. St. Petersburg, in particular, just couldn’t take no for an answer and built a beautiful stadium, despite a lack of encouragement from Major League Baseball. As it was probably always destined to do, the franchise went to Miami, and St. Petersburg’s stadium is the elaborate home to tractor-pulls.”
– John Mort, Booklist
“A work that could cause an iceberg to boil. It has everything but a happy ending, rattling off the aggravation we’ve endured here in the clinical manner of an autopsy.”
– Joe Henderson, Tampa Tribune
"Awesome."
– Tedd Webb, 970 WFLA Radio
“In Stadium For Rent, Bob Andelman details St. Petersburg's journey from stalking horse to major league market with great skill and attention to detail. It's impossible to fully grasp the impact of the worst-to-first AL pennant winners of 2008 without learning how they came into existence.”
– Jonah Keri, author of The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First
“A home run... If you think there was a lot of public game-playing (if you’ll pardon the pun) going on while the City of St. Petersburg kept getting the short shrift, you should read the book to see what really went on.”
– John J. Tischner, Pinellas County Review
“A finely detailed account of this region’s dubious distinction for taking brush-back pitch after brush-back pitch from the denizens of the diamond... It isn’t a pretty story. It isn’t even ugly. Just pathetic. Stadium For Rent is a good, albeit frustrating read.”
– Dan Ruth, Tampa Tribune
“The best parts of the book are Andelman’s portrayals of personalities who led the baseball effort. Among them: Jack Lake, the cantankerous newspaper manager obsessed with getting baseball; Frank Morsani, the remarkably baseball-naive car dealer; and Rick Dodge, the steel-willed assistant city manager who bounced back after each defeat only to become embroiled in yet another plan.”
– E.A. Torriero, San Jose Mercury News
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About the author
Bob Andelman is the author or co-author of several best-selling biographical, business, management and sports books, including:
* The Wawa Way (Running Press), written with Wawa Vice Chairman Howard Stoeckel. Publication Date: April 2014.
* Building Atlanta (Chicago Review Press), written with African-American business pioneer and "bail bondsman" to the civil rights movement Herman J. Russell. (Introduction by former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young.) Publication Date: April 2014.
* Keep Your Eye on the Marshmallow (Berkley/Penguin), written with nationally recognized motivational speaker Joachim de Posada. Publication Date: May 2013.
* Fans Not Customers (Profile UK), written with Metro Bank UK and Commerce Bank US founder Vernon W. Hill II. Introduction by bestselling management guru Tom Peters. Publication Date: October 2012.
* Mind Over Business (March 2012), self-help, motivational nonfiction written with sports and business trainer Ken Baum.
* The Consulate (March 2011), fiction written with former CIA and FBI agent Thomas R. Stutler.
* The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths (Hyperion/Voice, May 2010), written with nationally recognized criminal profiler and frequent CNN contributor Pat Brown. The book has been optioned by Warner Bros. Television and a pilot, "Trooper," was producer by Jerry Bruckheimer in 2012 for CBS and again for TNT in 2013. It has also been sold overseas in Japan, Korea, Germany, Portugal and Taiwan. Audible.com purchased audiobook rights.
* Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (Dark Horse/M Press, 2005), the biography of the legendary artist and writer who is often credited with taking comic books out of the ghetto in the 1940s and establishing the market for adult, long-form comics - graphic novels - in the 1970s. A Spirited Life has been translated for Spanish and Italian editions. Andelman also read for the audiobook edition. http://www.aspiritedlife.com and http://www.aspiritedlife.com/
* Four Seasons: The Philosophy of a Business (Portfolio/Penguin, 2009), by Isadore Sharp, founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Andelman did not author or co-author this book but came in and helped Sharp near the end of the writing process by conducting dozens of interviews with Four Seasons managers and executives and contributing additional material to the finished manuscript.
* The Profit Zone: Lessons of Strategic Genius from the People Who Created the World's Most Valued Companies (Times Books/Random House, 1997), with Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison, partners in Boston-based Mercer Management. The Profit Zone is Andelman's best selling book overall with more than 100,000 hardcover copies in print after 10 printings. Worldwide, The Profit Zone has been translated into Chinese (Complex and Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
* Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion (Times Books/Random House, 1999), on which he collaborated with Home Depot co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Kramer endorsed the timelessness of Built From Scratch when he told his viewing audience, "Built from Scratch is the best of all those business biographies." Built From Scratch was translated for a Japanese edition.
* Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great (Times Books/Random House, 1996), with Albert J. Dunlap, chairman and CEO of Sunbeam. Published in hardcover, paperback and audiocassette. Mean Business was a finalist in the Financial Times of London Global Business Book Awards.
Since February 2007, Andelman has also produced and hosted the popular "Mr. Media Radio" celebrity and media newsmaker online interview show heard and seen on his own site, http://www.mrmedia.com, as well as syndicated to iTunes, BlogTalkRadio, Stitcher, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, Networked Blogs and YouTube. The show averages approximately 2,000 visitors/archive downloads a day.
Andelman and his wife of 22 years, Mimi, live in St. Petersburg, Florida with their 14-year-old daughter.
For more information:
Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, mbourret @ dystel.com
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