Joe Maddon on Rays’ Forever Home: Let’s finish what we started

The following column was written by longtime MLB manager Joe Maddon, who managed the Rays from 2006-14 and guided them to their first American League pennant in 2008.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. That championship resolved something that had haunted the team and its fans for 108 years. It ended a drought, a curse, call it what you will. It completed a promise. It made history. When that final out was recorded in the bottom of the 10th inning in Cleveland on November 2, 2016, there was a sense of completion – of finally finishing unfinished business.

I was the manager of the Cubs in 2016. I'm proud of what we accomplished in Chicago, and the many anniversary celebrations ahead this season will rekindle lifetime memories while serving as a reminder of one of the most important doctrines in sports and life.

Finish the job.

Even when I've gone on to other things or enjoyed some success, the thought of unfinished business lingers and is never fully reconciled. For me, that's another World Series memory – October 2008 as manager of your American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays.

We know how that World Series ended. An expansion team that made its Major League Baseball debut only a decade earlier as the Devil Rays was on the verge of winning it all. We proved in October 2008 that the Rays belonged, and that the Tampa Bay region was what you'd call a Baseball Town.

We just didn't finish the job.

I've thought about that moment a lot over the past 18 years. I know what finishing looks like – we did it in Chicago. The feeling of coming close but not finishing? That's different. That's the kind of thing that stays with you.

I don't want that to be Tampa Bay's story again.

Tampa Bay doesn't deserve unfinished business. It deserves a World Series championship team and because the Rays Way is the right way, I have faith it will happen in time. We only need to see the 2026 edition of the Tampa Bay Rays to know the baseball side of this organization – as always – has a plan for both immediate and sustained success.

Of more urgency today after around 20 years of stops and starts – mostly stops – is a new ballpark.

• City, county approve non-binding deal for Rays' new ballpark proposal

I have been closely following the new ownership group's vision for a Forever Home, as the new ballpark has been called. And from the moment I first saw the design, I was moved. Not just because I love the Rays and Tampa Bay, though I do, but because I understand what's at stake after two decades of unfinished business.

This isn't just about a ballpark. The strategy for a wraparound district that includes a new campus experience for Hillsborough College and places to work, play and live is fantastic. As important, the new ownership group led by Patrick Zalupski, Bill Cosgrove and Ken Babby brought to Tampa Bay a plan to make this all a reality. Their plan is fair and smart, and it has gained preliminary approvals with the county and city. That’s great news and I commend our community’s leadership to keep this moving.

Now it is all whether Tampa Bay finishes what it started in 1998 as an MLB expansion club and in 2008 when the Rays had a taste of success. It’s about whether future generations will have a team and ballpark to call their home and treasure forever.

As a manager, I appreciate the responsibility of decision-making. I can completely appreciate the moment in front of the elected officials and their staffs in Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa, because the opportunity they will deliberate is unlike any before them. It is bold, progressive and historic. It will require commitment, belief and investment, both from the community and team ownership.

So, it’s decision time. And from my view in the dugout, this isn’t about making an easy decision, or a hard decision, but the right decision. And that’s to approve this plan, so we finally finish the business of where the Tampa Bay Rays will forever call home.

Unfinished business will mean another forever – always wondering why Tampa Bay couldn't finish what it started in 1998 with the Rays and Major League Baseball. Forever watching other communities think big, and then go big, knowing those communities don’t remotely compare to what Tampa Bay has to offer. Or, in the event this plan is not approved, had to offer.

Tampa Bay needs to do this. I am confident it will.

And when that Forever Home opens its doors in 2029, I will be there, every bit as proud as I was to represent Tampa Bay in 2008 when we reached the World Series backed by a fan base that rocked the baseball world. That’s when we arrived and proved that Tampa Bay was in business. Now, we have business to finish.

Let's finish it.