Sarasota County is in a bit of an awkward spot a month into dating the Atlanta Braves.
It turns out the team also is seeing its ex: Palm Beach County.
Those two have a lot of serious history together. The team trained there for almost 40 years before dumping Palm Beach for Orlando and there are clearly still feelings between them.
Now Palm Beach County administrators plan to meet with consultants for the Atlanta Braves later this week to potentially develop a formal proposal to build a new spring training complex for the team there.
If that proposal comes back to the Palm Beach County Commission, they could have the opportunity to rekindle their relationship with the Braves before Sarasota County ever has the “are we exclusive” conversation.
Sarasota County leaders have played it cool so far — “We are still in active negotiations,” is the only line they’ll say publicly about it — and admitted the Braves are an attractive team, so it’s no surprise others are interested.
But Joe Capozzi at the Palm Beach Post has uncovered that team officials told commissioners there they’d rather get back together than move into new digs in North Port.
Local leaders say they won’t engage in a bidding war for the team, but they have hinted the proposed $100 million complex in the West Villages development at U.S. 41 and River Road could have better financing available with the developers involved. Palm Beach leaders have admitted financing would be the biggest hurdle there because the county committed $113 million two years ago toward a new complex for the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
“We have not seen a site plan; this is really in the tentative stages,” Palm Beach County Comissioner Hal Valeche said Tuesday. “Whether it can be done yet, we don’t really know … We really don’t have anything on the table and we’re not going to be discussing this until it gets a lot more formed.”
With the Braves playing both sides, it’s down now to whoever tells the team they want to be exclusive first.