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Rays Of Hope Radiate On Bay Area Baseball - And Yet

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 21, 2007

Updated: 11/19/2007 08:55 pm

There was a lot to like about the Tampa Bay Rays' recent rollout of their new sunburst-complementing, traditional-looking, home-and-away uniforms and new name.

For openers, not much this side of Monte Carlo surpasses the early evening, fall ambience of Straub Park fronting St. Petersburg's glorious downtown waterfront. An overflow crowd of 7,000 gathered, and video screens accommodated those who chose to watch from picnic blankets.

Busby Berkeley couldn't have orchestrated it any better:

• A parade of Rays - from crowd favorites Jonny ("I can't wait to get this dirty") Gomes, Carl Crawford and Scott Kazmir to manager Joe Maddon, Hall of Famer Wade Boggs and venerable coach Don Zimmer - was a well-timed, well-directed marketing success.

• Kevin ("Field of Dreams," "Bull Durham") Costner accepted an invitation and performed with his seven-piece rock band, Modern West. "We made a cold call that was warmly received," explained Rays' President Matt Silverman.

• The crowd queues were longer for new Rays' paraphernalia at the Champs Sports tent than they were at the chicken fingers and beer concessions combined.

• Dads and sons maxed out at the interactive stations.

• Retirees enjoyed anything that was free.

• The fashionably surly Delmon Young flew in for Project Rays Runway.

• Rocco Baldelli threw out souvenir baseballs without hurting himself.

• Elijah Dukes was safely sequestered in the Dominican Republic playing winter ball.

And yet ...

Everybody knows that new uniforms are merely symbolic of a new identity and a new beginning. And after a decade of bad baseball, symbols only work in the first off-season. Then the team MUST start winning.

As a Penn State alumnus, I know of uniform symbolism. When the Nittany Lion football team wins, the uniforms are classically plain and cool. When the Lions lose, especially on the road, the look is boringly plain and dull. Nobody loves a uniform loser.

Then there's the ill-timed stadium scenario.

The Rays barely enjoyed 24 hours of radiating in their new identity, including big crowds for a Tampa road show and St. Petersburg City Council members sporting new Rays jerseys. Then they found themselves in the frustrating position of upstaging themselves. Details of plans for a new stadium on city-owned, bayside land downtown were leaked at least a month before the Rays geared up for a formal announcement accompanied by one of those imposing, populace-stirring renderings.

Oops. Cue the "Field of Schemes" rhetoric.

The Rays, we learned, propose a 35,000-seat, $450 million facility on the site of picturesque Al Lang Field at Progress Energy Park. Funding would involve the sale of the Tropicana Field site, some $60 million in state sales-tax rebates and a direct Rays contribution of $150 million. Whatever the merits of a state-of-the-art, nautically themed, destination facility, there's no lack of skeptics - from politicians who aren't Charlie Crist to win-starved fans. And, yes, a vote will be required.

Any stadium talk ultimately devolves into a conversation about the challenging marketplace that is Tampa Bay. The population is dispersed and parochial. A sizable chunk is on a fixed income. There are too many transplants with too many allegiances elsewhere and too few corporate headquarters.

Inevitably, the issue of St. Petersburg - anywhere in St. Petersburg - as the best place for a Major League Baseball franchise is revisited.

The best place is still one with much easier access to what is east of Hillsborough County, including Orlando. Not one where due west is the Gulf of Mexico and Corpus Christi, Texas.

But there's that all-but-impossible-to-break Rays' lease with the city of St. Petersburg that runs until 2027.

But hey, how 'bout them new Rays?

Critic's Corner

• Hillsborough County commissioners have no right to bristle over references to their well-earned "dysfunctional" and "yahoo" reputations. The most recent example was ousting Commissioner Rose Ferlita from her seat on the Tampa Port Authority and replacing her - by an outrageous 5-2 vote - with Brian Blair. If anyone should "apologize," it should be those five - or everybody but Ferlita and Mark Sharpe.

Ferlita, a former Tampa City Council member, is smart and familiar with port issues. Blair is neither. The port is also in Ferlita's district.

The port, for those commissioners who need reminding, is important to this region - from economic as well as security standpoints. Much too important for Blair, whose credentials include being a ham-handed, inarticulate chairman of the county's Environmental Protection Commission.

Couldn't Blair have been, say, permanent chaplain? That way he could formally thank God every week for having been elected to something.

• May cooler heads yet prevail on Tampa City Council. The flap over who speaks for Tampa, a city with a classic strong-mayor form of government, is petty, ego-driven and unworthy of either council or the mayor.

Best bet: Let Charlie Miranda mediate. He has the qualifications on this one: old-school smarts - and he no longer wants to be mayor.

Root For Kansas

As the college football season heads toward the climactic Bowl Championship Series national championship game, there isn't the same level of intense interest for Florida teams as previous years.

Defending champion Florida will likely settle for a New Year's Day bowl, and the University of South Florida played its way out of contention. Florida State University and Miami were never factors.

So root for Kansas to win it all.

Kansas could find itself in the national championship game. And if the Jayhawks win it all, they will come to Tampa next season as the defending national champion. This means even more national exposure for USF and an opportunity to start off the new season by undoing much of the frustrating, unfulfilled promise of 2007.

Joe O'Neill is a South Tampa writer who can be contacted at www.OpinionsToGoOnLine.com.

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