It is still very much a long game, this business of Major League Baseball returning to Montreal. How long? Five to seven years, maybe? The next step remains a nod or at least a wink from commissioner Rob Manfred, which is pretty much where things stood last week and the week before that.

But make no mistake: Tuesday was a bad day for baseball in Tampa Bay, a fact that I’m guessing was not lost on the people who are doing all the right things in all the right ways to bring baseball back to Montreal. People like Stephen Bronfman and Mitch Garber who know how to keep their mouths shut; who operate in the quiet, professional manner it takes to lay the groundwork for a new ballpark and new team. They get it, just as Mark Chipman and the Winnipeg Jets folks got it.

Two weeks away from the expiration of a window to explore new ballpark sites for the Tampa Bay Rays, Manfred sent off a blistering letter to Hillsborough County decrying a lack of details on the “merit and feasibility” of a new ballpark in the eastern end of Tampa. That was followed by Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg – no media whore – holding a news conference at the winter meetings, answering questions for half an hour with remarkable candidness.

In a previous life, I covered the long, slow agonizing death of the Expos, folks. I’ve heard this stuff before and when it gets beyond pure dollars and cents and branches into things such as a lack of commitment from the local business community and foot-dragging and multiple failed ballpark sites – well, been there. Seen it.

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Sternberg walked a fine line Tuesday between saying he remained committed to the region and lauded some of his local political allies, while stating that he was “wildly disappointed,” in the apparent collapse of a ballpark initiative in Ybor City, a historical warehouse area in Tampa’s east end. But referring to an earlier stillborn project on the St. Petersburg waterfront, he said: “We’re at two strikes, now.”

Manfred’s letter, a copy of which was procured by the Tampa Bay Times, criticized an absence of a concrete financial figure for the public commitment to the new ballpark, which was reported to cost $896 million and was supposedly going to be a hazy 50-50 split between the team and local jurisdictions. The Rays have a lease at Tropicana Field until 2028, which included a three-year grace to examine options elsewhere in the Bay Area. That three-year window closes Dec. 31 and all of a sudden what seemed like gradual movement seems to have dissipated.

“Momentum and progress are real, (but) we’re not at all close to a workable framework,” Sternberg said.

Now, this doesn’t mean the Rays are moving to Montreal, Monterrey or Portland, Ore. – the latter of which has secured land for the construction of a new ballpark with an eye toward Major League Baseball, which has had success in getting new facilities built everywhere but Tampa and Oakland. And, yes, commissioners have always been ready to ratchet up pressure on local politicians when it comes to ballpark financing and construction. It will surely gall people in Montreal to think they might be used as a stalking horse to force the hands of politicians in another jurisdiction; that for baseball this is a crisis that’s too good to waste.

Yet while you could hear the sabres rattling Tuesday morning, but there was a significance to the announcement: Sternberg eschews long, public interviews yet here he was on a dais at the winter meetings normally reserved for the announcement of free-agent signings and trades – in front of the national media, answering questions for almost half an hour. You had a question? He answered it. He came painfully close to laying out a timetable for resolution of the stadium issue, which has been his major focus since purchasing the team in 2005. He noted that the Rays’ final season in Tropicana Field under terms of their lease will be 2027. “Nine more seasons there,” he said with a shrug.

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Nine seasons… but how many lives?

Sternberg made not-so-subtle references to the fact that the City of St. Petersburg is anxious to begin re-developing the 80-acre site on which the Trop and its parking lots sit; which could be taken to suggest that St. Petersburg might have a financial reason to resolve the Rays’ status ahead of 2027. And he upped the ante with local businesses, using Seattle’s recently successful bid for an NHL franchise as a counterpoint. He also pointed out Las Vegas’s new NFL stadium, under construction kitty corner to the winter meetings headquarters, Mandalay Bay.

“Things haven’t been fully flushed out to this point,” Sternberg said. “There was an award in Seattle recently for hockey, and season ticket commitments and all those things, we haven’t had that happen here yet. Things happen in other areas where there’s a football stadium going on over here, and I can’t say I know many of the specifics, but the naming rights and corporate partners have committed to things.

“We planned this for a 2023 ballpark first pitch,” said Sternberg, a New York-based investment banker who still resides in the northeast. “It became clear to us with a number of the milestones not being hit a couple months ago that this was going to extend to the 2024 season. Each season moves along, things get more expensive. Other particulars come into play as well. So right now, if you snap your fingers and everything happened tomorrow, it would be 2024, and the clock is ticking on that.”

Sternberg added that: “We don’t have a Plan B right now.”

“Look,” he said, “I said initially when we first came in there was no way this team would be playing in 2027. I would say right now odds are we’ll be playing closer to that date, if not to that date. But regardless of that, we will have to have it figured out where our next home will be. I’m committed to doing it in Tampa Bay. But right now, we’re looking at 2024. It’s not that far past that to get to ’27. We’ve got a couple of years to figure that out. We’ve got to know where the 2028 season will definitively be played over the next few years. We had a long window to get to that point. And that’s collapsed now.

“We’ve only got a few years left to really definitely get it done in Florida. We’re down to a third strike.”

Some points to consider? Concrete plans for a new ballpark in Montreal have not been made and given the price of construction an eventual bill of close to C$1 billion is not out of the question and that would be in addition to the price of buying the team; the Rays actually have a robust regional television deal; Florida carries a great deal of weight politically and U.S. jurisdictions always seem to eventually crater under pressure. Toss another two per cent tax on rental cars or something. Boom.

But here are some other things to remember: No one says Sternberg needs to sell the team. He lives in New York, what if he moves it and retains a share? Second, Manfred is on record saying he realizes that the days are gone where a new ballpark must be completed before a team arrives. Shovels in the ground are good, but more important is a logical business plan with broad local political support. Third, Manfred is said to be less worried about publicly traded companies being significant stakeholders in teams than was his predecessor, Bud Selig. Fourth? Manfred is an unabashed internationalist; expanding the game’s footprint is a legacy issue.

So did baseball move closer to a return to Montreal on Tuesday? Or is this just a missile test ahead of a nuclear option? My guess is we’re still at the latter stages as opposed to the former. But I know this: I’m watching this situation a whole lot more closely. And so should you.