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White Sox offer $5M to break Tucson dealWhite Sox offer county $5M to leave TucsonCounty accepts $5M for White Sox to leave cityPima County accepts White Sox buyout offerD-backs looking to leave here; Rockies, too

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When we heard that Pima County accepted $5 million from the Chicago White Sox so that the ballclub could sever ties to our community, our first thought was: Would the last team to go please turn out the lights?

The spring-training situation in Tucson was already bleak. It becomes even gloomier now that the White Sox are officially gone and reports have surfaced that Tucson's two remaining spring teams could also be headed to the Phoenix area.

Hours after the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to accept the White Sox buyout to end the lease at Tucson Electric Park and relocate their spring-training operations to Glendale, the Arizona Diamondbacks said they are entertaining offers to move. The Diamondbacks could possibly take the Colorado Rockies, the other Tucson spring-training team, with them.

If this were a baseball game, the home team would be trailing by five runs with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth.

Spring training in Tucson isn't dead. But it might as well be.

It's hard to blame the county for the White Sox situation. Club owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants to move his team to a new stadium in Glendale. The team was contractually obligated to stay in Tucson through 2012, but Reinsdorf did everything he could to get out sooner and now he has his wish.

Short of taking the White Sox to court, county officials had few options. The only thing they could reasonably do was salvage whatever they could from the relationship.

Five million dollars doesn't seem like much when you consider that spring training has an annual economic impact of $30 million in Pima County, but it's hard to say whether officials surrendered prematurely or got as much as they reasonably could from the White Sox.

County officials accepted the buyout reluctantly.

"We've come away with something that appears to create a win-win (situation), but it only appears to do that," Supervisor Richard Elías told the Star's Erica Meltzer.

Officials know the ramifications. With the White Sox out, the Diamondbacks and Rockies can legally break their spring-training leases, which run through 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Unless the city, county or the private Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority miraculously persuade one or two more major-league clubs to relocate their spring-training operations to Tucson within the next couple of years, the Diamondbacks and Rockies almost surely will leave whenever a stadium is built in the Phoenix area.

The Arizona Republic reported in a front-page story Wednesday that the Diamondbacks are in talks with the Gila River Indian Community to possibly move to a new two-team facility southeast of Phoenix. Team officials said there are other suitors, though they declined to be specific.

Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall told the Republic: "We would rather just stay (in Tucson). But there has to be more than two teams."

The Rockies have said in the past they also would rather stay in Tucson. But they also find themselves at a disadvantage when so many teams train in the Phoenix area and few train in Tucson.

So how does Tucson make a comeback and hold on to spring training? It won't be easy, but here are three steps:

● Persuade the Legislature to pass a bill allowing the Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority to create a taxing district.

● Persuade Pima County voters to approve new taxes to fund facilities for pro baseball and youth sports.

● Persuade one — but preferably two — major-league clubs to move their spring-training operations from Florida to Arizona.

The first step seems doable, but the latter two would be exceedingly difficult. Like winning a ballgame in the bottom of the ninth, it would take a heroic effort and strong community leadership.