Let’s put partisan politics–from Washington to Tallahassee to Hillsborough County–aside. Let’s put the Riverwalk, mass transit, downtown renovations, Hyde Park Village revitalization, the Armory reincarnation and Channelside Bay Plaza scenarios on hold.
Let’s talk baseball, if not seamless transitions.
I’m a fan. Not as hard core as some (yes, that’s you, Larry), but still a lifer. Baseball provides continuity amid societal impermanence. It’s also what happens when you grow up in Philadelphia. It isn’t optional.
Especially if your dad played Army ball with some of the “Whiz Kids” Phillies. Especially if your mom planned Sundays around doubleheaders and unabashedly declared that she felt like she had “died and gone to heaven” upon finally meeting Richie Ashburn, a fan-favorite, Hall-of-Fame Phillie.
Fast forward to Tampa Bay of the 1990s.
I was delighted when a franchise was finally awarded–after relo flirtations with the Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, San Francisco Giants and Seattle Mariners–to this area that is my chosen home. Ironically, I was living in Atlanta at the time of the historic announcement.
Context matters, however.
Major League Baseball chose the Vince Namoli group to bring baseball to St. Petersburg’s Florida Suncoast Dome. The Devil Rays debuted in 1998 in an outdated facility on the wrong side of Tampa Bay. It became a self-imposed governor on success in a skewed, asymmetrical market with no mass transit.
Return to now.
It’s the summer of Rays’ general manager Andrew Friedman’s discontent. Bump up payroll to new heights, however modest by Yankee, Red Sox and Dodger standards, and experience the season of consummate frustration.
Even with two starting pitchers shelved from the off-season, who saw this coming with the Rays? The perfect storm of injuries, disappointing free agency signees and key incumbents seemingly passing their peak all at once. Worst to first to worst? Has “Moneyball” run its course? Does this inevitably happen to an overachieving franchise? Or is this just one of those years?
And then I notice that amid the David Price trade rumors and references to Devil Rays’ days of yore there’s “Thanksmas” scheduled for this week.
This Friday’s “Thanksmas” is a mini version of Rays’ manager Joe Maddon’s pet charity, the one that has featured Maddon and local fans volunteering to help the homeless for the last eight years. The one that comes in the fall–a week-long event between THANKSgiving and ChristMAS–where Maddon buys, prepares and helps serve a traditional Italian and Polish holiday feast for local shelters.
Now there’s “Thanksmas” on July 11. Add more context.
There’s an “off year” in baseball, where player numbers are down, and there’s an “off year” in life, where a family’s next meal may be problematic. A lot of folks not part of professional sports’ parallel universe have it tough.
Maddon’s day job will have him at the Trop by mid-day Friday for a game with the visiting Toronto Blue Jays, but he’ll be serving lunch–meatballs and pierogies–earlier at the Trinity Cafe on Nebraska Avenue. Maddon is looking for ever-greater volunteerism and wanted, he said, to “bring attention to the homeless issue at a time of the year when it is not top of the mind.”
And I was reminded of a conversation I had last summer with Maddon. It was a pre-game chat at the Trop that had nothing to do with baseball. It had everything to do with life in the real world.
He talked about his hometown of Hazleton, Pa., a hardscrabble burg of about 25,000, with roots in anthracite coal and generations of European immigrants. Now the city is 40 percent Hispanic, and the cultural and demographic changes have been disruptive. The animus of stereotypes and mistrust had replaced melting-pot metaphors. He saw the societal fault lines first hand in a visit a few years back.
“I was upset,” he said. “Our town’s gonna die, I thought. We are pushing people apart.”
So this son of plumber Joe Maddonini and waitress Albina Klocek decided to do something about it. Three years ago he created the Hazleton Integration Project to foster dialogue between the Hispanic and Anglo communities and facilitate a forum for breaking down barriers and unifying different cultures. Volunteers, fund-raisers and corporate donors followed.
Then last summer he personally cut the ribbon on the Hazleton One Community Center, a neutral place where disadvantaged children from both sides of the divide could participate in no-cost or low-cost cultural, educational or sports programs.
Maddon’s rationale was blunt. “There are some people who want to see other people fail,” he said. “People can teach their kids to hate. This is what we have to eliminate–the small-minded thinking. … You get the kids together, and it will be overcome. I believe that.”
Maddon, a Renaissance man-ringmaster with a serious social conscience, is unique inside and outside the lines. He’s who you want when your team–or your town–faces long odds.