We all have them. Those memorabilia nooks. Old photos–in albums, cigar boxes and cubes–yearbooks, certificates, plaques, term papers, hats, membership cards, political buttons, cool coasters, hotel notepads, foreign coins, newspaper clippings and eclectic curios–remember Super 8 movie cameras and projectors?–from another time, place and, seemingly, personage.
Someone–OK, me–once said: “We are what we keep.” However often we do it, whenever we inventory what we continue to lug through life, it says something about us. Why do we still have it? Why did we finally jettison something? It must matter.
I checked out my own stash of stuff the other day. It used to be more extensive. Multiple moves have reduced inventory. Downsizing happens.
A cursory look yielded vintage Time magazines with cover visages of Anwar Sadat, G. Gordon Liddy, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. There was Newsweek’s “Good Bye To The ’60s” issue and yellowed headlines shouting: “JFK Assassinated,” “Nixon Pardoned,” “Reagan Crushes Carter” and, uh, “O’Neill Named Speaker.” There were copies of publications I used to work for, such as the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times, Indiana Business, Tampa Bay Business Journal, Florida Business/Tampa Bay and several incarnations of Tampa city magazines. And a smattering of well-worn paperbacks that are variations on a back-in-the-day, snapshot theme. As in Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” and Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” Inexplicably, something called “So You Think You’re Irish” was also in the mix.
And then in mid-reverie, I happened upon this baseball-card sized souvenir–right next to a Cliff’s Notes summary of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and an ash tray from Bud Miller’s Cafe in Evansville, Ind. This orange and yellow card, however, only took me back to March 14, 1990. Less than a generation ago, but what timely perspective.
On the front it said: “Welcome Major League Baseball.” MLB was being formally introduced to the “Florida Suncoast Dome.” It was the grand opening of what we now know as the Trop, the home field of the Tampa Bay Rays. And so what that MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth had warned the city of St. Petersburg not to build anything on spec.
I was there as the editor of Florida Business/Tampa Bay magazine. Our cover story, “The Bay Area’s Big League Pitch,” included an illustrator’s rendering of how the new Dome would look when reconfigured for baseball. It depicted packed bleachers and outfield signage of would-be sponsors that included Bay Plaza, Barnett Bank and GTE. It also showed a left-handed third baseman. My bad.
The reverse side of that Dome-opener card had four marketing bullet points aimed directly at MLB.
*”Major League Commitment … 22,697 season ticket reservations sold in 30 days.
*Major League Market … The 13th largest media market in America. Florida’s number one metro in America’s 4th most populous state.
*Major League Facility … A 43,000-seat baseball showcase.
*United political and corporate support coupled with a dedicated local ownership group.”
As it turned out, Tampa Bay missed out on the Chicago White Sox, the Seattle Mariners, the San Francisco Giants, the Minnesota Twins, the expansion of 1993 (Miami and Denver) until finally landing a franchise (along with Arizona) in ’96 that debuted as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998.
That first season the Devil Rays’ attendance average was 31,000, topped by a crowd of more than 45,000 for the March 31 season opener against the Detroit Tigers. The next season, that average dropped by a third to 21,000, and it’s basically been a struggle ever since–even with a competitive team. Official capacity is no longer 43,000, but a downsized 34,078. This year the Rays are 29th out of 30 MLB franchises with average attendance under 18,000. The reasons remain the same: An obsolete, catwalk-skewed facility on the western fringe of an asymmetrical market with few corporate headquarters, no mass transit and too many locals with allegiances elsewhere and lifestyles that don’t prioritize baseball in the summer.
Honestly, I didn’t start out intending to write about the Rays again–yes, their future in Tampa Bay has to be in Tampa–but it’s indicative of what can happen when you start rummaging around in the lost and profound department.
And once again, it prompted perspective. And once again, it matters.