Rays closer Troy Percival, 39, is now in the midst of rehab on his back – about seven weeks after undergoing surgery to correct a disc problem. That’s the injury that nagged him into ineffectiveness and onto the disabled list last season. He was no help to the team down the stretch and was left [...]
I was thumbing through one of the daily newspapers’ fan guides to the “NFL Experience.” It contained, among other things, a trivia quiz on Tampa Bay football. Things such as: “What was the Bucs’ inaugural season?” (1976) and “Who was the Super Bowl MVP for the Bucs?” (Dexter Jackson). And then there was this: [...]
No one would dispute that Rocco Baldelli was one of the classiest guys to play for any of our local professional sports franchises. Think John Lynch, Brad Richards, Derrick Brooks. Baldelli, 26, was bright, polite and well-spoken – as well as a good player who might have been – and may yet be – [...]
As we’ve all been noticing over the past few years, the Children’s Gasparilla Parade down Bayshore Boulevard is no longer some cute spin-off. It’s no longer just a nice, wholesome — but token — sop to the sober. Nor is it simply a nostalgically modest reminder of what parades once were: a really big [...]
History and irony were the double feature last week at the Tampa Theatre, where the inauguration of President Barack Obama was shown on the big screen. More than 1,000 — black, white, office workers and students — turned out for the political theater within the movie palace. It was celebratory and sentimental and gushingly [...]
As you likely read, the latest Gallup poll shows President Barack Obama with an approval rate of 68 per cent after his first few days in office. For what it’s worth, after a similar period, George W. Bush’s rating was 57 percent and Bill Clinton’s 58 per cent. In response, I conducted my [...]
What to make of the last-minute personnel changes for Super Bowl week’s “Lingerie Bowl”? A dispute over pay and, notably enough, venue — having to stage it at Land O’ Lakes’ Caliente Spa and Resort, a nudist community – apparently caused some of the players to quit. You have to draw the line somewhere. A [...]
The Super Bowl is known for the eclectic celebrity crowd it attracts. Among those coming to Tampa: Shawn Johnson. In case you’ve forgotten, the 16-year-old gymnast is a gold medalist from last summer’s Olympic Games in China. And what will she do? She’ll be “participating” in the 13th Annual Super Bowl Cheerleading Spirit [...]
If Tampa Bay officials had their choice, it wouldn’t be the Arizona Cardinals coming in for the Super Bowl to oppose the Pittsburgh Steelers. A bigger, colder market team, such as Philadelphia or New York, would have been. But there is an upside to the Philadelphia Eagles having been knocked off by Arizona. [...]
In the aftermath of the Jon Gruden/ Bruce Allen firing, this much is obvious: *That was one expensive Super Bowl. *The arrogance meter at One Buc Place just nosedived.
