Last week presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned in West Palm Beach and drew a big crowd and induced a lot of buzz. The Democratic senator from Illinois called on attendees at the Kravis Center to fight cynicism and embrace a new kind of politics.
But in order to successfully fight that good fight against cynicism and on behalf of a new kind of politics, he will have to raise approximately $100 million by the end of this year. Only in America.
He may be the best reason to watch a Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ game – and yet you’ll never see his name in a box score.
He’s TV broadcaster Joe Magrane, 42, the Rays’ conversationally perceptive, engagingly witty, occasionally irreverent color-analyst. He defies the broadcast typecast: former player capitalizing on name recognition and frequently reminding viewers what it was like back in the day.
He’s also good enough to have earned some NBC and Fox network gigs; he did the (Sydney) Olympics in 2000 and (Athens) 2004. He also upstaged the regulars on “The Best Damn Sports Show Period,” and some — well, conspiracy-buff buddies — theorize that’s why he hasn’t been invited back.
“Magrane is pure entertainment,” says Skip Hill, veteran broadcaster and communications instructor at the University of Tampa. “He’s that funny. He can absolutely carry a game.”
And make no mistake, broadcasting a perennial loser such as the Rays – who lost 101 games last season – can require a lot of heavy rhetorical lifting. In Magrane-speak that will range from groan-inducing puns, self-deprecating put-downs and colorful anecdotes to candid — but never personal — criticism of the home team. It could even include a dead-on impersonation of the late, iconic broadcaster Harry Caray when the Rays are out of it early.
“I’m not a journalist,” points out Magrane. “It’s not my job to break stories. I work for the team. My focus is on the how-and-why and to try and brighten up the game.”
That makes him the perfect verbal ping-pong complement to the more staid Dewayne Staats, the Rays’ highly regarded, play-by-play announcer.
“For all of his ‘left-handed’ personality, Joe really is a perfectionist,” points out Staats. “Always prepared as well as fun to be around. And as with any of the really successful guys in this business, people do get a sense of who you are. Really, what you see is what you get.”
For the most part.
Funny and friendly translate well, but a broadcast booth can only frame so much.
You wouldn’t necessarily discern a selfless, highly-sought MC for myriad Bay Area charities, including Abilities Inc. of Florida, the Moffitt Cancer Center and the ChairScholars Foundation.
Nor would you know that this gregarious baseball insider has a traveler’s frame of reference that transcends dugouts and diamonds. Indeed, it ranges from the old world architecture of Prague, a St. Peter’s audience with Pope John Paul II and the “infinite view” of Versailles to the “food-as-art” side of San Francisco.
And from the chest up, of course, nobody looks 6’5″. The boyishly good-looking Magrane is all of that. In fact, 250 pounds worth.
He’s also a walking fashion statement with two custom tailors, New York’s Dominico Spano and Tampa’s Kenneth E. Jennings, having his pattern on file and his cell number on speed dial. He was once featured in GQ magazine as “The Most Eligible Bachelor in Baseball.”
“Joe looks magnificent,” says Jennings. “He’s an Apollo.”
An Apollo who can also be sartorially eclectic. Seemingly nothing doesn’t go well with arch-supporting, custom-made cowboy boots, courtesy of favorite Fort Worth cobblers. Magrane also has some black-and-white wingtips that resemble classic spats and retro sports coats that only a certified fashionista could get away with.
“Oh, he can be very demanding,” acknowledges Jennings. “I’ve said ‘good bye’ to a suit because he wasn’t happy with it. And that’s as it should be. I’m meticulous myself, and I’m expensive.” Indeed, an average Kenneth Jennings Saville Row Bespoke Tailors’ suit sells for $2,500, with some topping out at $10,000.
Magrane favors blues and grays as well as dark stripes and peak lapels. It’s all about “context” and looking “dignified,” he explains.
“It’s important to look classy,” Magrane underscores. “Just like it’s important to be well-mannered. I guess I’m ‘old-school’ on this one.
“As a player, I always thought it was an honor and a privilege to wear a big league uniform,” points out Magrane. “It was important to make a good impression when fans saw you, and you weren’t in a Woodstock tee-shirt and flip flops.”
Among the few places you’ll find the dressed-down Magrane these days: Old Memorial Golf Course, Dubliner’s Irish Pub in South Tampa and within the 6,500 well-appointed square feet of his North Tampa Avila home – nestled next to the Avila links’ 11th hole. He resides there with his wife of 15 years, Renee, and daughters Sophia, 9, and Shannon, 11, students at the Academy of Holy Names in Tampa. All manner of framed family visages — not sports or celebrity memorabilia — dominate the décor.
As does the Magrane sense of humor, according to Renee.
“He tells me I have whoopee-cushion humor, and he’s dry,” she says. “But, yes, he’s always funny around the house.”
And according to Renee, always making the best of found family time in the travel-challenged life that is the cross-country lot of a Major League Baseball broadcaster. That varies from shuttling his daughters to school in the off-season to engaging in animated games of catch in the back yard.
“He has a roughhouse side and he’s a ‘man’s man’ sort,” notes Renee, “but his little girls absolutely steal his heart. He’s a good family person, and he believes in putting time and energy into his kids – and making sure they know right from wrong.”
Between baseball seasons the Magranes make it a point to set aside a weekly “date night.” It’s either a movie or dinner out with close friends. The Capital Grille in International Plaza is a favorite venue as are nearby Roy’s and Flemming’s. On occasion, they’ll escape to a mini get-away at the Don Cesar resort on St. Pete Beach.
However many times he crosses the Howard Frankland Bridge, Magrane says he never takes the commute for granted.
“I never fail to notice what a neat area this is,” says Magrane. “When the sun hits the water, it’s like a post card. And we have it year round. How lucky is that?”
Des Moines, Iowa native Joe Magrane was an All-American pitcher at the University of Arizona and a first-round draft choice of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985. He signed for a bonus of $110,000.
In 1987 he finished third in balloting for the National League’s “Rookie of the Year” honors. The next year he led the league in ERA (Earned Run Average) at 2.18. In 1989 he won 18 games for the Cardinals and finished fourth in the NL’s MVP voting.
Little did he know, however, that he had peaked in his third season. A series of arm ailments and three elbow surgeries prematurely ended his career in 1996 at 32.
He joined Tampa Bay – along with broadcast partner Dewayne Staats – and began his 10-year association with the Rays in their inaugural season of 1998. Magrane and Staats are signed through 2008.
* “Steroids in baseball: That’s like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.”
* “No, I don’t begrudge today’s players making what they do. Hey, you can’t take it with you. That’s why there are no luggage racks on hearses.”
* “I was having dinner the other night with Bono, and he said, ‘Joe, nobody likes a name-dropper.'”
* “There’s a parallel between being a pitcher and a broadcaster. Once the words leave your mouth, there’s no getting them back – just like a bad pitch. I know.”
* “I live on a golf course. Far enough away to not be in the line of fire, close enough to hear the expletives over a missed putt.”
* “Last year Dewayne (Staats) and I reached the exalted status of having our own bobble head give-away. We became caricatures of ourselves. Maybe we are anyhow.”
When Saddlebrook Resort opened a quarter century ago, there was no mistaking what it was. It was a resort designed for meetings. Exclusively. Nearly 500 rustic, Wesley Chapel acres – about 30 miles north of Tampa International Airport – devoted to the care and comfort of corporate America away from home. Plenty of places to meet, eat, sleep, schmooze and play.
Fast forward 25 years. More than 80 per cent of its business is still conferences – on average between 450 and 475 a year, ranging in group size from 10 to nearly 900. From Heineken and Harlequin to ITT, Nestle-Purina and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
But the differences are as notable as they are noticeable: the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy; the Harry Hopman Tennis Academy; a 270-foot-long, 500,000-gallon SuperPool; 45 tennis courts; a luxury spa; a five-acre, wooded team-building venue; a prominent sports village and fitness center; and more than 250 private homes, such as the one that Jennifer Caprioti is building on bucolic Fox Hunt Drive. And the (pooled condo) accommodations now number 800 guest rooms and one-, two- and three-bedroom suites. Wireless, high-speed internet access is ubiquitous. The ranks of employees have swelled to 850. There’s even a fully-accredited (K-3) school, Saddlebrook Preparatory.
“We’re a resort first,” emphasizes Alberto Martinez-Fonts, Saddlebrook’s director of marketing, advertising and public relations. “We are a local business driven by large corporations.”
But while meeting planners have Saddlebrook on speed dial, it’s golf and tennis that have given the resort its international renown. From early on, Saddlebrook has been much more than well-regarded camps and clinics. It’s been a legend magnet.
There are the iconic names of (the late Australian Davis Cup captain) Hopman and Palmer, and the latter’s two signature courses plus a host of tennis luminaries who have learned and lived here. To name-drop a few, in addition to Caprioti: Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, James Blake, Martina Hingis and Justine Henin-Hardenne. There are also the surfaces, which replicate those of all four Grand Slams: Har-Tru, Deco-Turf, grass and clay. Saddlebrook is also the official resort of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
You never know who you’ll find hitting – or living – here. And you never know who you’ll find that may be tomorrow’s Tiger Woods or Roger Federer.
There’s even a chance that they are among the 132 students enrolled at Saddlebrook Prep. About 45 per cent are from overseas – from Venezuela to Vietnam. Approximately 60 per cent of the students (grades 7-12) combine academics with an intense focus on tennis instruction, the remainder on golf. Classroom ratios are about 10:1. Room, board, tuition and instruction runs $37,500 per year.
Headmaster Larry Robison pointedly notes his school’s priorities.
“Our mission is to prepare them for college,” states Robison, a former principal at Zephyrhills High School. “And we support the sports endeavors. In that order.”Indeed, he has the numbers to underscore his point. Nearly 95 per cent of Saddlebrook grads earn college scholarships.Cole Conrad, 17, an 11th grader from Fairfield, Conn., expects no less.
“Connecticut in the winter isn’t exactly ideal for tennis,” he says. “Here I get to play all the time, and I like the mix of coaches. I’m probably three times better than when I arrived (the previous year). I’m hoping for a scholarship; preferably here in Florida.”
A recent “Newsweek” poll indicated that a majority of the public – 58 per cent – believes the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys was politically motivated.
Question: Given that all such U.S. attorneys serve at the “pleasure” of the president, why wasn’t the poll response 100 per cent?
Isn’t this debacle a subset of the sausage metaphor? Some things – such as the passing of laws, the editing of news, the making of sausage – you just don’t want to see? The process is never pretty, especially the one at the Justice Department that’s always rife with political agendas and chronic cronyism.
This is another installment of the White House Amateur Hour. An Administration utterly unsuited to deal with oversight in the new Democratic, subpoena-empowered Congress. Not even resident sage Fred Fielding could deter them from the clichéd, passive-voiced, pseudo mea culpa: “mistakes were made.”
And, realistically, if the White House is forced to dump its clueless, Texas-loyalist Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who does the president send over to satisfy Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee? Is Ramsey Clark available?
Lighten up, America. It’s a prank. And a fairly funny one at that.
The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering the merits of Morse vs. Frederick. Deborah Morse is a high-school principal who contends that a student’s 14-foot banner proclaiming “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” was an unacceptable pro-drug message. She suspended its creator, Joseph Frederick. He sued, saying his free-speech rights were violated.
A decision isn’t expected until July, but the Court may be well advised to give more than lip service to the argument of Justice David Souter, who said: “It sounds like just a kid’s provocative statement to me.”
Indeed. Too bad common sense and a heart-to-heart chat between principal and student didn’t trump the trivializing of the First Amendment.
But the principal says Frederick’s drug message crossed the line. But a non-obscene, less-than-inciting, goof-on-the-establishment sign? That’s not even one toke over the line.
Tampa’s declining crime rate — 36 per cent over the last four years — was a linchpin in Mayor Pam Iorio’s recent State of the City address. Now that drop has been noted in the March-April issue of AARP magazine, which lists 10 cities “where your chances of running into a criminal decreased in the past five years.” The 10 “most improved” included Tampa at number 2.
“Oil-Rich Nations Turning Attention To Alternative Fuels” read recent headlines across the country. The main, but hardly exclusive, focus was on the United Arab Emirates, the number four OPEC producer, and what it was doing to reduce demand for fossil fuels internally.
In a Manhattan Project-like strategy that puts a premium on applying the sun, the wind and hydrogen to domestic energy needs, the UAE hopes to save more high-value fossil fuels for export to markets such as the U.S.
The UAE also knows its oil won’t last forever. Yet it wants its luxurious, even sybaritic, lifestyle to survive in perpetuity. Hence its serious, prioritized approach to energy conservation at home.
Anyone else see an irony here?
This just in. Iran is insulted by the American movie “300” and is officially complaining about disparaging depictions of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
And this from a country that still owes us an apology for holding American embassy employees hostage and threatening them with mock executions in 1979-80.
Maybe Hollywood would ante up if Iran would formally acknowledge that hostage-taking is always poor form and in the scheme of things much more offensive than unflattering movies. And then apologize.
Absent that, Iran can just make do with all those bootleg DVDs that young Persians will still watch — decadent and evil stereotypes notwithstanding.
In her annual State of the City address, Mayor Pam Iorio reported that the state of the city remained good. Crime, which has increased alarmingly in cities such as Orlando, continues downward here. More buildings are up, and a bunch more are on the way. The words downtown and revitalization no longer seem incongruous. And more attention is being paid to places such as East Tampa, Tampa Heights and the Central Park Village area.
Another State of the City presentation, another day at the office in Pamelot.
And another high-energy, “pulse of the city,” greatest hits video that Director of Public Affairs Liana Lopez labors so hard over. Somehow finding, for example, just the right up-tempo music to complement footage of road widenings and drainage upgrades.
But for a time there was only sound – no video to project on those large screens at the Tampa Convention Center. It probably took 7-8 minutes to fix. If you’re the main presenter, it can seem like a light year. If you’re a chief executive, you’re used to making the tough calls and managing on-the-job crucibles. But a missing or malfunctioning stage prop can be the real mettle detector.
Cue Mayor Pam.
Even her harshest critics acknowledge her formidable podium skills. She rhetorically tap danced and ad libbed her way through the awkward interlude by whimsically referencing everything from the ACC tournament to “Cigar City Chronicles” to the Strawberry Festival.
After the presentation, the exiting audience of city personnel and local politicos were more abuzz about the mayor’s stage presence than that overall 9.4 per cent drop in crime the last year, which included an 18.5 per cent decrease in the violent stuff.
The state of the mayor, who almost pitched a shutout in her recent re-election, is also good.
Every year, it seems, the basketball tradition known as “March Madness” includes tales of woe and crushing, disillusioned disappointment: teams that barely missed the cut for the 65-team “Big Dance.” This year that includes the Florida State University men and the University of South Florida women.
Without getting caught up in the esoterica of weighted schedules and RPIs and all that, let’s at least acknowledge this: If there are more than a half dozen teams in your own conference that are better than you, what are you doing in a national championship tournament anyway? Shouldn’t selection mean selective?
Time was when only a conference winner went to the NCAA Tournament. Period. Or only a conference tournament winner moved on.
Back in the day, the biggest obstacle to a Jerry West-led West Virginia team making the NCAAs was the Southern Conference Tournament final with tiny Davidson. It was great hoops and great drama. And occasionally Davidson slew Goliath.
The problem now is there are too many teams from the big-name, big-budget conferences in the tournament — and in a game of increasing parity not nearly enough Valparaisos, Vermonts, Butlers, Belmonts, Evansvilles and Bucknells.
You want to make the Big Tournament? Earn it. Don’t be an also-ran in your own — however big the name — conference and then complain because it’s embarrassing to the administration, alumni and fans to miss a bloated, 65-team tournament.