Friday, March 29

Phillies fans traveling to watch Spring Training frustrated by MLB lockout


Local businesses are frustrated by the lockout, as Clearwater is also the Spring Training host for the Toronto Blue Jays. Without baseball, the city could be missing out on millions of tourism dollars from two MLB fanbases.

Ralph Kleinchrod owns The Home Plate, a baseball-inspired restaurant in nearby Dunedin, FL. He said his business relies on Spring Training tourism.

“This is not good for us, for the whole city,” he said. “But what can we do?”

He said that spring break tourism has kept his business active, but ultimately, his bottom line will feel the absence of baseball fans.

“We hope [Spring Training] is coming soon, maybe one week later or two weeks later and everything would be fine. But [the fans] must come.”

Frenchy’s, a chain of six restaurants across Clearwater, also relies on MLB tourism for business.

“We know for a fact that we’re going to take a hit. It’s certainly going to make an effect. We just don’t know what type of effect now, especially with the last two or three years of the pandemic being all weird,” said Jay Cabral, who works in Frenchy’s marketing department.

“We’re hopeful that we can get a resolution between the players and the owners. There could be a lot of Philly fans who booked a trip itching to get out after the pandemic, and they’re just coming down anyways. So it’s really hard to tell from our perspective, but we know that it’s going to make an impact,” he said. “We just don’t know what it’s going to be like. Too early to tell.”

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Frank Rocco fears this lockout could permanently affect the relationship between the Phillies and their fans.

“People are really, really turning away from Spring Training and not wanting to come down because they are so mad and so upset,” he said.

While he and other Phils fans miss out on preseason baseball, he said that ultimately, the ones getting hurt the most because of the lockout are Clearwater business owners.

“You’d be surprised what people spend. Oh my god, it’s unbelievable. Just multiply like 60,000 people coming down here, and let’s just say they spend $3,000 each. Then you have kids, a lot of them take off school for a week and they come down here with their parents,” he said. “The economy down here is really, really hurting and they’re really, really complaining about losing these Phillies fans of Spring Training. They look forward to it every year.”

Without baseball this year, members of Rocco’s Facebook group now mostly post old pictures and reminisce about Spring Trainings of yore, while thousands of fans desperately hope the league and its players come to a resolution before all Spring Training games are canceled.

The MLB has been in a lockout since December, and all activities have been canceled through at least March 7. The Phillies are reimbursing anyone who purchased Spring Training game tickets. On Monday night, after 16 hours of deliberation between the two sides, the MLB extended its self-imposed deadline to reach an agreement with the MLB Players Association to Tuesday, March 1 at 5 PM EST. 

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