ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The county is angry. The Rays are skeptical. The future is bleak.

There are a few other minor details involving hurricanes, contracts and elections, but that’s the gist of the Rays’ stadium situation today.

St. Petersburg has a broken ballpark it is contractually required to fix but is going to cost a ton of money it cannot afford, even with insurance. Pinellas County has a pending bond issue but a new roster of commissioners who seem dubious about a previously approved deal for the new stadium. The Rays have a responsibility to pay for cost overruns on that stadium but, with the price expected to soar, have adopted a passive-aggressive stance to back out.

So how does this get resolved?

It doesn’t.

Not without a hero. Or a savior. Or a fairy-tale knight.

Maybe I’m excessively pessimistic, but it’s hard to imagine the existing plan being fulfilled or a new deal being struck in Pinellas County. The Rays want more money now that the building of the stadium has been delayed and costs have gone up. Meanwhile, a rising number of Pinellas County Commissioners want to provide less money and new St. Petersburg City Council members due to take over in five weeks are also dubious. In that scenario, there is no middle ground. Just an empty dome where box scores used to thrive.

Which brings us back to the idea of a hero.

It looks increasingly possible that the Rays are either going to move out of Tampa Bay, or Stuart Sternberg is going to sell the team, which also could mean relocation. I mean, I can’t imagine Sternberg is going to stay long term in a rebuilt Tropicana Field, and no one seems optimistic about a new stadium going up in Pinellas.

So what Tampa Bay needs is someone local to step up and purchase a large hunk of the franchise and pay for a stadium, or at least provide a stadium financing plan that does not involve more than a half-billion in public dollars.

Easy peasy, right?

Except that never happens around here. We have beaches, we have craft breweries and we have sinkholes. But we seem to lack billionaires.

Think about the roster of team owners in this community going back to the mid 1970s:

— Buccaneers: Tom McCloskey (Philadelphia developer), Hugh Culverhouse (Jacksonville attorney), Malcolm Glazer and family (Rochester/Palm Beach businessman)

— Lightning: Kokusai Green (Japanese corporation), Art Williams (Palm Beach insurance tycoon), Bill Davidson (Detroit businessman), Oren Koules (Hollywood producer), Jeff Vinik (Boston investor), Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz (New York investors)

— Rays: Vince Naimoli (Tampa businessman), Sternberg (New York investor)

Notice a trend? For the most part, our sports owners come from somewhere else. Now, we’ve been fortunate that none of the incoming moguls have moved a franchise away from Tampa Bay, but there have been some tense moments over the years, including the Bucs flirting with Baltimore in the 1990s.

So the idea that someone local will simply write a check for $1.5 billion to buy the team, and then invest another $800 million or more building a stadium, seems more rosy than realistic. No one local stepped up and pulled off a purchase when the Culverhouse trust was selling the Bucs, or when Naimoli was feuding with his minority partners or when Vinik decided to sell a majority stake in the Lightning earlier this year.

Beyond the ownership question, fans are still holding out hope that accommodations can be arranged in Tampa/Hillsborough, but there have been numerous attempts to move the Rays there in the past decade and nothing has come of it because there is not a lot of political willpower to commit public funds. If anything, the outlook is even more grim today where the current Hillsborough County Commission didn’t even want voters to have a shot at a referendum earlier this month to fund the school system.

And you think those commissioners are going to spring for a stadium?

Sure, Hillsborough voters recently approved an extension of the half-cent sales tax that helped build Raymond James Stadium, but the extension was for 15 years (as opposed to the previous 30-year lifespan), and the Bucs and Lightning are sure to want a piece of that for stadium refurbishing.

This is exactly why the Rays agreed to build in the same location as the Trop, even though 99% of America thought it was a foolish idea. It was because there were no financially attractive options elsewhere. The Trop land had acres of parking that could provide revenues through redevelopment, and Pinellas County was sitting on a ton of tourism dollars that could only be spent on specific items, including a stadium.

What Tampa Bay needs now is something we have not yet seen:

Either a potential owner with a bank account large enough so that money is no object, or a stadium plan that essentially pays for itself. The pavilion stadium at the Trop came close to fulfilling that idea, but it went off the rails when the county delayed the bond vote on Oct. 29 which, inadvertently or not, took them past the November election and changed the makeup of the commission.

(Commissioners absolutely hate this version of events, but it’s completely accurate. There was zero talk of anyone backing out of this deal until the county pushed the bond vote beyond the November election. Anyone watching the commission meeting on Nov. 19 saw one new commissioner ridiculing Administrator Barry Burton over the stadium terms and another saying he had “dozens and dozens of unanswered questions about this deal.” Given the very real possibility that the commission would not approve of the bond sales, the Rays and their development partners would have been insane to continue planning, and spending, for a groundbreaking in early 2025.)

I honestly have no idea how this story plays out. Given the current impasse between the Rays and the county/city, and the lukewarm response from Hillsborough/Tampa in the past, it’s hard to envision a stadium on the horizon.

Could a new ownership group get it done? Maybe. There are multiple cases of a stadium getting built that way in other locations. Heck, it happened that way with the Bucs after the Glazers bought the team.

Could Sternberg pack up and move the Rays? Maybe. I’m guessing the team will already be on the move, at least temporarily, when 2026 rolls around and Tropicana is still not fixed and the Rays do not want to be stuck in an 11,000-seat spring training stadium.

Around here, the 2011 pennant race is the standard for all improbable comebacks. The Rays were nine games behind the Red Sox in the wild-card race with 24 games remaining. They eventually caught Boston and the teams were tied on the final day of the season.

The Red Sox were winning in Baltimore and the Rays were trailing the Yankees 7-0 at Tropicana. Tampa Bay scored six runs in the eighth with Evan Longoria providing a three-run homer. The Rays were down to their final strike in the ninth when Dan Johnson tied it with a homer of his own.

At 11:59 p.m., the Orioles came from behind to shock the Red Sox in Baltimore. Along the first base line in Tropicana, a fan held up a sign as Longoria stepped into the box in the 12th inning:

“WE BELIEVE IN MIRACLES”

At 12:05 a.m. in Game 162, Longoria hit a walk-off homer.

It feels like those are the kind of odds Tampa Bay is facing today. Improbable, unlikely, desperate odds.

We need someone to play the role of Longo.

We need a miracle.

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