How often in these last weeks of this most improbable of baseball seasons, have we heard folks – and media outlets – say, in effect, “Well, if it weren’t for (original Devil Rays’ owner) Vince Naimoli, none of this (Rays’ success) would have been possible”?
Enough, arguably, to become a given. Naimoli wasn’t particularly well-liked or baseball astute, goes the reasoning, but he did step up and bring a team here. So he deserves, even if begrudgingly, credit for that. Absent a team, none of this World Series stuff happens.
Only if you sign on to revisionism.
Recall that from the late 1980s on, the Tampa Bay market was becoming increasingly viable for Major League Baseball – and a team was coming here whatever the scenario. That’s why Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago all used this market as leverage to get stadium deals at home.
Also, recall that several ownership groups were in the applicant mix. It was MLB that chose the Naimoli group – and with it the ill-suited dome, a St. Pete location at odds with Tampa Bay’s geography and demographics and a ham-handed principal owner who was a public relations nightmare.
Had the franchise gone to another ownership group, possibly the one headed by Frank Morsani, it would have come to Tampa, where it has always belonged, to max out on regional marketing and attendance draw.
Granted, we wouldn’t have had the “Hit Show,” but we might not have had a laughingstock decade before success.