Current Ray Troy Percival

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 off the post-season roster.

Percival, who is signed for $4 million for 2009, hopes to be ready for opening day. But one wonders, given the Rays investment, if he could do even more to facilitate his disc recovery and assure that he can contribute and actually earn his salary this year.

To that end, how about working in a salad? He was at least 50 pounds overweight last year.

UTB Spartans

            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: “What is the University of Tampa Bay’s nickname?” (Spartans).

            Say what? Aren’t we the market that is all too frequently frustrated by clueless outsiders, especially the media, who can’t understand or remember or care that there is a Tampa Bay body of water, a Tampa Bay region and a Tampa the city? So what does the Tampa Trib do? References the “University of Tampa Bay.”

            That’s much more embarrassing than that grammatically incorrect welcome-to-Tampa sign (“THERE’S so many reasons to love it”) that was initially hung at Franklin and Platt streets.

            THERE ARE so many reasons to differentiate Tampa and Tampa Bay.

Ex-Ray Rocco Baldelli

            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 – great. But his rare muscle-fatigue condition made his career questionable.

            The Rays stuck by him when he proved generically injury prone and then was diagnosed with that mitochondrial abnormality. The Woonsocket, R.I., native was well compensated to rehab – and to rehab and to rehab.

            Better times may – or may not – have been in the offing. The tail end of last season provided more than a medical measure – or Ray – of hope.

            But financial realities of a small-market franchise in a sport with no salary cap and some competition-skewing, deep-pocketed behemoths (notably the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox) made keeping Baldelli problematic. He was a free-agent – but one with an asterisk. He was damaged goods – but a local fan favorite who still had a tantalizing upside.

            He was offered $500,000 for next season by the Rays. The Red Sox also offered $500,000 but added incentives that the Rays couldn’t touch. He took the Boston deal and returned to New England. 

            On the way out, he thanked everyone profusely and even took out a half page ad in the St. Petersburg Times to formally and publicly express his gratitude to all the fans.

            Frankly, it was disappointing. And not just because the team was losing a good player, a good guy and a community asset. And not just because he signs on with the competition. Especially THAT competition.

But because he had been well rewarded in his tenure here – even when he was much more promise than performance. Not only did he make hundreds of friends and please thousands of fans, but had also made millions of dollars.                                                     

In short, Rocco Baldelli always seemed like one of those special sorts, for whom money – especially when you already have a bunch – wasn’t the sine qua non that it is for most other pro athletes.

Such naiveté. “The Little Engine That Could” couldn’t keep him.

And we, of course, can see for ourselves how he does. The Sox and Rays play 18 times each season.

Let’s Re-think Gasparilla Parade(s)

            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 deal for little kids.    

            Indeed, last Saturday the Children’s Parade drew more than 200,000 spectators and attracted more than 100 floats and 50 participating krewes. Plus marching bands, dance squads and various school and community groups.

            It’s that big. No wonder it also merits its own air show and a culminating “Piratechnic” extravaganza.

            But more to the point, it proved, once again, that Tampa can put on an impressively big parade – with all the trappings – without drunks and punks. It didn’t ooze booze; lemonade was the thirst-slaker of choice. The aerial banners flown overhead pitched “Legos Pirates” –not Happy Hours and Bud Light. Chi-chi corporate tents didn’t crowd out the hoi polloi. Beads were bestowed without breasts being bared.

            And even more to the point, it was an all-call for Family Tampa, black and white and brown. Parents and their kids. What a concept.

No fights, no obscenities, no boorish attitudes, no ad hoc vomitoriums or port-a-lets. No inebriated teens “trespissing” on private property.  

Thus, no need for a “safe house,” which has now become a staple of the main Gasparilla Parade, the adult-themed Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla invasion on Feb. 7.

After seeing how the Children’s version is conducted — and how well it is attended — and what a logistical and behavioral mess the adult version is — I would say this of next week’s drunk-and-litter fest: Move it.

It has outgrown its Bayshore Boulevard parade route. The mystic crude invasion of the surrounding neighborhoods is now a given — and unacceptable. It’s reassuring, of course, that there’s a safe house, courtesy of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, but it’s disturbing that one is needed. The annual message has once again been sent: “We fully expect a number of drunk, drugged or, as a consequence, injured teens.” And thanks again, enabling parents, for providing Buffy and Biff with a free pass for the day.

As diligent and high profile as Tampa Police officers are, they are woefully outnumbered in a parade venue that’s easily overwhelmed. Mardi Gras doesn’t look like this. Too many local residents – and in the interests of full disclosure, I’m one – feel under house arrest. You have to guard your property or hire a cop. Or both. 

Put it this way. If there must be a parade in addition to the Children’s, then start it in downtown and take it through Channelside, where there is more open space and more parking.

When you can’t confine the “invasion” to Bayshore Boulevard, and when you can’t curb the conduct of “attendees” who are drunk before the parade begins, you’d better have a Plan B that’s not Bamboleo. And you’d better hope it gets implemented before there’s a serious injury or an invasion fatality that prompts a civic outcry for change.

History And Irony As Double Feature

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 hopeful. There were plenty of standing ovations — and some notable Bronx cheers as well.

            The history was as obvious as Obama’s African-American lineage.

            The irony? Up until 1964, when Obama was three years old, Tampa Theatre was enforcing a “whites only” policy.

Presidential Poll Update

            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 own unscientific, utterly unofficial poll to compare results. And I do have friends across the political spectrum.

            The results: 2 per cent approved of yet another poll on anything.

Lingerie Lineup Change

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 nudist resort is no place for lingerie exhibitionists.

Olympic Cheer Provider?

  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 Clinic at the NFL Experience tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 24).

I know, I know. Cheerleaders are increasingly athletic — indeed, gymnastic — but they’re still “cheer providers” doing what some winsome young women do. I don’t disapprove.

But Shawn Johnson is an elite athlete, a classy young woman who won a gold medal for the United States in Beijing. She’s better than this. She’s earned her cheers the old fashioned way — in the ultimate arena.

Tampa’s Super Bowl Pairing

            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. At least we won’t have Philly fans in our midst still braying about the World Series.