* Too bad that something so important as the location for a new major league baseball stadium for the Rays has had to involve the minor-league city council of St. Petersburg.
* Imagine, it’s now been 20 years since Tampa Bay was awarded a Major League Baseball franchise. To commemorate the occasion, the Rays have selected original owner Vince Naimoli to throw out the first pitch before Monday’s season opener.
Too bad that first pitch isn’t being thrown out by Frank Morsani, who led the early (Tampa Bay Baseball Group) effort to land the expansion franchise for Tampa. Recall that it was Morsani who bought 42 percent of the Minnesota Twins in 1984 and then sold it back at cost–at MLB’s request–to help keep the franchise there. MLB would then renege on its gentleman’s agreement that Morsani would later be rewarded with a Tampa expansion team. We know the rest of the St. Petersburg story.
* Red Sox slugger David Ortiz is notably outspoken. He doesn’t nuance or equivocate or qualify. Except, curiously, this one time: “I never knowingly took any steroids.”
* Last week Tampa Bay and Nashville played one of the biggest games of the year. Who would have guessed not too many years ago that the sport would have been hockey?
* I’ve seen more than a few analogies of late that compare the University of Kentucky basketball team and the New York Yankees. As in teams many of us like to hate because they’re too good, year after year. Wrong. The hate part is correct, but it’s because they get to play by, what amounts to, different or abused rules. In a sport without a salary cap, the Yankees get to outspend everyone. In a sport with too much lip service to “student-athlete,” UK gets super 13th- grade mercenaries to pose as student-athletes until March Madness of their freshman year.
* It doesn’t make my short list of sports I care about, but IndyCar racing–as in the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg–arguably does more for this region’s image than any other sporting event. Those establishing and cutaway shots of beaches, palm trees, a world-class waterfront and chamber of commerce weather show off an environment and lifestyle that is priceless PR.