Ownership requires intestinal fortitude

Turns out one of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team's biggest fans is from another sport — hockey.

That would be Jeff Vinik, owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the NHL, who also moonlights as lead developer on a project primed to reshape a 42-acre swath of downtown Tampa. Vinik's grand plan requires a significant company to move its headquarters to town, and to do that, he says, keeping the Rays in the area is imperative.

If the Rays move, says Vinik, “the first thing people will say to me is you can't even keep your baseball team here. I'm not going to move my company here.”