I thought it was all too casual a mention when I looked at the cover of the St. Petersburg Times sports section and found a sidebar snippet mentioning the death of Bill Davidson.

William Davidson, owner of the Detroit Pistons, founder of Palace Sports and Entertainment and former owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning franchise, passed away. And the amount of respect thrown his way by acknowledging his passing is a sidebar note?

I’m up in arms about that, but really — that’s a media kvetch and unimportant. This fan respects what Davidson’s empire achieved with the Lightning under it’s control and Davidson did indeed make a wise investment in the Lightning and the St.Pete Times Forum. Even if the Lightning were not financially solvent during the majority of his ownership tenure… The arena itself was one of the most active and highest rated in the world.

In other news: Everyone probably has noticed that next to nothing has been published here at Boltsmag down the stretch… We’re in transition to something else right now with the site and further details should be coming public in the immediate future. Stay tuned.

Taking a break from fuming over the Lightning for a minute, I got a nifty little email this afternoon from one of the upteen PR firms that contact me from time to time with various sport inanities that are you there. This may be a Tampa Bay Lightning blog (that also covers Tampa Bay sports and sometimes national sports news), but at any given time I’ll get emailed marketing for rival franchises (Panthers) or uninteresting videos that PR firms hope to make viral….

In this case, I got a Baseball marketing attempt. This set off my cynic alarm:

Fans who want to rub elbows with the 24 greatest home run hitters of all time should check out http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/500-Home-Run-Club-LLC/63511284320?ref=ts

It’s the timing that really makes me cynical about this. Yes, it’s Spring Training and hope springs eternal. This is when MLB has it’s annual renewal…

But then again? This is also the time that is plagued by scandals to no end with thanks to some of these aforementioned “24 greatest home run hitters of all time”. How many of those players used the Juice to get where they are? How many are suspected to have used performance enhancing drugs to reach that plateau?

Hope springs eternal… but cynicism prevails while the ugliness of the ‘Roid era continues to hang over MLB. “24 greatest home run hitters” at this point in time is subjective at best, no matter what the stats say.

Today’s been a good day… Some good business got done, some good things are happening in life…

…And the Gruden/Allen ineptitude complex at One Buccaneer Place is history.

Check out Buc’Em for the latest blogging and discussion about the news.

Taking a break from my attacks on Lightning management, I’ll redirect my efforts now toward the city of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Previously known as “God’s Waiting Room” (just had to dust that one off), St. Petersburg has turned into a happening place over the last decade. Nightlife thrives, there’s a happening residential community both downtown and elsewhere in the city… Things aren’t all rosie there, however with economic disparity and racial/social issues, but it’s a far cry from the void that it was for so long.

Oh, lest I forget, there’s a little baseball team down there that’s got a bit of a following now. Which brings me to the point of this post.

You see, the Tampa Bay Rays announced their desires to have a new baseball stadium (just as the economic climate was turning sour in December 2007) built on the site of Al Lang Field. While the design and funding concept was outside the box, there were too many issues (economics, logistics, NIMBY’s, etc) that put a halt to the plans for Tropicana Field’s replacement.

But the team is still exploring options and places around Pinellas County…

Which has St. Petersburg crying foul because the team’s lease at Tropicana Field and with the city of St. Petersburg does not expire until 2027, and they don’t want the Rays to go anyplace outside the city. Oh, and they’re not sure if they even want a new stadium for the Rays…

But they demand the Rays be their own personal Rays. Forget the region concept that is the name “Tampa Bay” — the thought debate on a new stadium has hinged (supposedly) in the past on the Rays ballclub being renamed the St. Petersburg Rays.

Read it all..

Greg White of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is now Stylez White.

Teen Wolf anyone?

Just a general heads up to the Tampa Bay sports bloggers out there:

Have you gotten your blog listed on TampaBLAB yet? The BLAB is a general listing and aggregation of local blogs in the Tampa Bay area.

While Buc’em, Bolts Blog, Best Bucs Blog and Rays Index are listed — I’m surprised there aren’t more… Especially considering how sports nuts the area is.

So if you want to further reach local readers, consider signing up. Self promotion is not a bad thing.

Over the course of the history of this weblog and my blogging in general on the Internet, I’ve had some problems with the Tampa Bay professional baseball franchise. I’ve had some problems with the mainstream coverage of the team when moves were made (blindly) to improve the team in 1999. The gaffes, the laughs, the horrors… Larry Rothschild, Hal McRae, Lou Pinella, Chuck “Chuckles the Clown” LaMar and some of the beyond-bizarre moves that he made as GM, and of course Vincent J. Naimoli who rounded out the ills and the thrills and the chills of the first few years of Tampa Bay baseball.

I’ve also lashed out blindly and ignorantly – trying to connect the dots that just weren’t there – to current Rays managing general partner Stuart Sternberg. I thought something sinister was afoot and recalled recent ill-conceived notions of contraction by Major League baseball.

I don’t have the links right now to all this “goodness”. And I don’t really want to spend time researching it. No.

Why? Because in their 11th season, almost 11 years to the day of the 1997 expansion draft, the Tampa Bay Rays ballclub will be participating in game one of the 2008 World Series.

That’s not a misprint.

That’s not a typo (and I should know, I make many).

I day I did not expect once again is here. Through all the squabbles I have been through both this season and in seasons past, I never really expected to see this day. I didn’t expect this team — the Wunderkids of St. Pete — to get thsi far though I could very well see them making a pennant chase.

And still ghosts haunt me. While I revel in Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Scott Kazmir, Andy Sonnenstine, Akinori Iwamura, Carlos Pena and the rest of the Tampa Bay roster… The unease of days past still linger. Brian Kelly, Greg “Toe” Nash, Jose Canseco, Gregg Vaughn, Wilson Alverez, and so on and so forth. The names are malignancies that have not been wiped out just yet.

So while I revel int he impossible — the Rays getting this far — it seems surreal to me. It will undoubtedly remain unreal to me for a long time to come. This is the apex of Tampa Bay’s baseball history. A quest that spanned decades and routinely pulled up disappointment.

And the question that stands out in my mind isn’t “How will it end?” No, it’s how much higher to the top? Because that’s where a Ray shines from — the top. And all this team has done this season is shine.

Shine on, Rays.

Congratulations to the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays.

From out of no where, having never won more than 70’s games, to League Champions… That is a huge hill to climb.

And it ain’t over yet!

The blogosphere is teeming with posts about the Rays win, but I’ll just link to a select few threads:

• Sticks of Fire
• DRaysbay
• Rays Index
• Sports Talk – Tampa Bay Sports Blog

Technical and off topic mumbo jumbo here…

I’d like to point out that, for a year or so, I have had in my ownership a domain name of a site that I thought went dead… Tampa Bay Sports Net (the domain name is tbsports.net). I snatched the domain up when it expired and have held onto it for safe keeping and possible use in the future. If you visit the domain, it currently points here (as does Raw Lightning)

While doing some research on Friday for a friend, I happened across… well? Tampa Bay Sports Net — the same Tampa Bay Sports Net that had previously owned said domain name. I’ve attempted to contact them through email and through their site (contact form is broken) because I had no malicious intentions when I snatched up this domain name. I was and am hoping to return tbsports.net to it’s proper owner.

So let me publicly request someone at TBSN1.com get in touch with me if they’d like their domain name returned to them. Thanks.

Very much off topic…

I grew up a Mets fan, living in a small village on Long Island in New York. I can remember, as a young kid, how everyone was going nutso for the Amazin’s of 1986. I didn’t truly grasp it, but in the following years I grew to love and cherish baseball — in general and New York Mets baseball. It followed me to Tampa Bay through the early 1990’s as I had access to WOR telecasts through local cable. All of this while I was drawn into the local quest for Major League Baseball.

So it doesn’t come as a surprise that I’ve been aware of New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon’s long sought Ebbets-Field inspired successor to Shea Stadium for more than a decade. My recollection may be wrong, but the first time in national print that I saw reference to the famed model of Shea’s replacement, it was a Sports Illustrated article that focused on former Mets general manager Joe McLlvane and the building-with-youth Mets of 1995/96 or there abouts. Two years before it’s public unveiling.

But the point of this post isn’t supposed to be about the previous version of what is now known as CitiField, nor about CitiField itself which contains the “Ebbets-Field inspired” architecture and a uniqueness that I can’t quite imagine.

That’s partly because I hold fondness for Shea Stadium.

The above should be looked at as the most absurd statement someone can make about Major League Baseball. Yet having been a fan of the Mets and having read about and reveled in some of Shea’s storied eccentricities and history (Yeah, yeah, yeah and so much more) I’m hurt and saddened about it’s in-progress demise.

Yeah, in progress.

15 days after the last public event at William A. Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York, the deconstruction of the Mets home field has begun in earnest. Stadiumpage.com has a few snap shots and I am sure that there are more out there on the web.

It seems surreal to see Shea with all seating removed, with the lamps ringing the stadium removed. And imminently, it’ll start being torn apart. 44 years of baseball (some of the worst and most miraculous in Major League history), of musical performances, of airplane derived annoyance and other landmarks and eccentricities will be coming down. And like many of the stadiums that have gone before it — pulled down in order to make space for parking.

For more on the end of Shea, visit Mets.com / MLB.com.

Rays / Red Sox about to get underway on TBS (why the hell did MLB approve putting all playoff games in the first two rounds on basic cable?!) but I wanted to bring up MSNBC trying to milk everything out of Tim Wakefield’s start tonight in an online column.

I’ve got loads of respect for Wakefield and can remember him from his early days with the Pittsburgh Pirates (when he wasn’t just a knuckleballer but one that would throw it fast). Between longevity and tenure, he gets a nod from me…

But Joe Maddon brought up a great point in the milk-this-drama-to-the-max article:

“When (the knuckleball) is righteous and on, nobody hits it on any given day.”

Nine innings of baseball… Don’t get cocky, don’t get complacent and don’t get frustrated if the Knuckleball is on tonight, Rays fans. At least two more games — starting right about now.

Update: 8:57 PM EDT: I stand corrected. Tim Wakefield chased after 3 innings. We go to the top of the fourth — Rays lead 5-1.

Opening day for the Tampa Bay Lightning and you know what?

I had no clue it was today.

I had no clue start time was before noon here in the Tampa Bay television market. I had no clue what station it was goign to be broadcast on — nationally!…right?! This is an international game after all and… what? Sun Sports? Oh…

It’s the perfect storm for the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Tampa Bay sports market. An offseason of upheaval, a roster converted, a new coach whose claim to fame is television and the mullet he sports. Huge contracts, huge egos, new front office personnel and of course an entirely new roster. That was the events of this summer — it’s a long way away from the hype of “Seen Stamkos?”.

And even with all the changes, it got lost in the mix of the news. Presidential election politics (yeah, that’s a sport too — just look at any partisan supporter online and you’ll see someone not objective but a homer of one political bend or another), the Farve fiasco and continuing stupidity at One Buccaneer Place; and that little baseball team in St. Petersburg… I heard they are doing quite well too.

And where do the Lightning fit into all this? How much do you know about the enw members of the roster? How much extra exposure have you seen to new cogs on this team? Odds are, you haven’t seen shit besides billboards touting Vincent Lecavalier around the Tampa Bay area. That’s a far cry to a team competing for fans in a marketplace.

All these distractions in the news, and O.K. Hockey not doing much in the way of marketing to get their name out… And what else has happened? The Bolts have to open the season in Europe. So while the coverage has been muted in the sports section of each local rag (with thanks to the Rays, the Buccaneers and college footbal), there is a further lack of exposure to roster moves, camp hype, position battles and all that jazz.

The puck dropped, the season has started. Now who in this marketplace is aware? Surely the die hards, but beyond that?

There is a lot of noise in local sports right now and everything that has led up to this moment from the summer past has been drowned out, passed over or flat out forgotten. And that’s a failing that will reverberate at one degree or another as the season goes on.

As of right now… it’s that baseball team that plays home games in St. Pete.

Yes, your Tampa Bay Rays.

There have been so many instances so far this season where a title next to the Rays name (AL East leading, for example) is just too foreign to grasp… But it’s happening, it’s really happening…

Enjoy it.

What do you do when someone is trying to voice disapproval of the new Rays ballpark propsoed by the team?

Answer: Block signs of the anti-sentiment. Hat tip to St. Petersblog.

The Tampa Bay area seems to be in disbelief right now with the team that resides in St. Petersburg performing in a certainly non sub-mediocre level that the area is so accustomed to.

Yes, the mighty Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Mighty? MIGHTY? They aren’t world beaters (as the series in Boston last week could certainly point out) but they are a sight better than what they have been in the past.

St. Petersblog pointed out how the Rays are ranked #4 on the worst-franchises ever list and it’s certainly fitting and deserved of the franchise that once attempted to charge a marching band to stay and watch the game after they performed the national anthem. On the field, they have won 70 games ONCE in ten seasons. Off the field… well, that national anthem flap is only the tip of the iceberg. I won’t go into that.

So with a whole lot of pathetic anecdotes and poor play dominating the team history, it’s not surprising that Friday’s game versus the Angels — a thrilling win with strong pitching and a Sayanora home run by Evan Longoria — drew a paltry 12,000. Even American Idol top-three performer Syesha Mercado couldn’t lure a larger crowd of people to spend a hot and muggy Friday night inside the climate controlled comfort of Tropicana Field and watch two of the top performing teams this season in the AL go at it.

It won’t take long for fever to truly grap Tampa Bay with this baseball team. But there have been a few seasons where there has been one degree or another of promise that only spiraled out of control into a pit of desolation and humiliation.

Terrence Mann’s soliloquy from Field of Dreams doesn’t apply yet. People won’t necessarily come, Ray. Winning may cure all ills but the element of belief hasn’t hit the general sport-fan populous in the area. Once it does… Look out. Until then, however, empty nights at the Dome will be what greets the team.

I’ve gotten used to the New York Islanders pulling stuff like this and I’ve also gotten used to the Tampa Bay lack-of-Devil Rays pulling this on a cost effective platform in the past…

But a nine year investment in a rookie? This takes things to new risk levels:

“This is obviously fairly unique,” Friedman said. “But it was something both sides had interest in really exploring and talking about. And both sides had to make some concessions along the way to get to this point.

“… We have to stay open minded. The economics of the game and us being a low-revenue team, we have to think differently and take chances such as this to keep our nucleus in place as long as we can.”

The salaries for the first six years of the agreement are guaranteed, with the team holding a one-year option for 2014 season and a subsequent two-year option for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. The contract guarantees $17.5 million. If the Rays exercise both options, Longoria would earn more than $44 million over the life of the nine-year agreement.

“Fairly Unique” does not begin to explain it. But Longoria was signed on the cheap considering what has has already accomplished and what he could command on an open market… IF he pans out (and even if not — scrub players are getting obscene money in MLB in recent years).

(yes, it’s been forever since I posted, this isn’t hockey talk alone though, so….)

How come, every time there is expressed outrage in the sports world, the fans cannot take it upon themselves to organize and petition or organize in one form or another for or against some tactic or move that has been undertaken by the powers-that-be of the sports world?

All of this jumped out into my mind Tuesday evening as a baseball fan complained about advertisements showing up on players uniforms while the players were in Japan for MLB’s opening series between the A’s and the Bosox. The horrid thought of MLB uniforms turning into NASCAR jumpsuits or stock-cars marred with stickers and advertisements was what led the person to post in the first place about the atrocity that is advertisements on uniforms.

Through my sports-fan experience over the years, I’m well aware of Baseball and other sports selling out where and when they can. Anywhere to make a few extra bucks — stick a sign and grab that cash you can. I’ve seen plenty of idiotic naming-rights battles (the freshest one being Wrigley Field in Chicago) and ridiculous names that come from it. I can understand fans being pissed off about this stuff…

…but has anyone noticed how little fans actually try to organize and openly revolt against such things in any given sport?

Why does cynicism or despair grasp the heart and mind of sports fans that they can’t find a common center and voice disgust together and show those powers-that-be their unified force? Why do we take such a lax view when we’re openly distraught over a change to the organized sports and pro franchises we love and cherish?

There are three examples I can think of off the top of my head — two from hockey, one from baseball. All have transpired the last ten years:

1) National Hockey League Fan Association: Probably the most notable organized attempt by fans in pro sports that I know of. The NHLFA was founded by a pair of disgruntled Ottawa Senator fans and gained traction in and around the hockey world for a brief time but never took off. In close to ten years the NHLFA claims under 30,000 members even with it’s repeated attempts to draw in the disenfranchised NHL fans that feel powerless to certain changes that Gary Bettman and others in the league have put forward. There is universal disgust among the hockey faithful at any given time, but there is no acceptance of a unified effort to give fans a say in the league.

1.a) The NHL Lockout of 2004-05: It was the biggest opportunity for a unified group to represent the fans at the bargaining table or perhaps gain Gary Bettman’s or Bob Goodenow’s ear. But instead of a unified effort, there were a number of small groups that would try to start fresh and organize there own anti-lockout faction. In the same light, I can re-tell a personal anecdote of creating a form email that would be sent to both Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux pleading for their intervention in the lockout. When I brought up this form both on Boltsmag and on message boards I was posting on at the time, it was met with cynicism and apathy. “Why would they listen? They don’t care.” “it’s not going to do anything, nice try though.” Over and over again the same dissatisfied, despondent response to the attempt to organize in mass.

2) The Montreal Expos: This is the biggest example of how both the feeling of entitlement and a cynical attitude can only help bring an end to something you love. Where indolence and apathy brought on by disgust did not save somethign that was indeed beloved. Montreal did have a baseball fan base. It did have passionate fans that loved the Expos. But it also had fans that felt entitled to being treated better than they were treated. Fans that took that entitlement and would revolt from the luxury of their own personal computers and over the Internet (but no where else). Even then, they were apathetic to do this revolting widely online and instead prefered to bitch and whine in their echo chamber. You can’t sway opinions by complaining about Jeffery Loria in one forum and not enlightening people to yoru plight. You can’t rally yoru own fans by feeling entitled to the team treating you better BEFORE you’ll openly revolt.

3) Rory Fitzpatrick: 2006-07 brought one of the best viral marketing campaigns I have seen by pro sports fans. Unfortunately it was awash in absurdity, it still is the #1 example of fans organizing. It’s just a shame that they had to do it as a joke. Starting with a small group of fans on hockey message boards, this started grabbing much more light in the eyes of the blogosphere and th mainstream meadia just after I blogged about it. Yet the movement was real and was ultimately stopped at the top, and likely to the relief of Mr. Fitzpatrick who was said to be embarrassed about things, it showed a sports example of what can be accomplished when fans unite. The NHL had to intervene tos top things…

Looking at the three examples (four) I can only note the personal gratification in each case — fans do not jump out to do work unless they feel personally gratified by the results. How do fans accomplish that feelign besides chatting with other fans and getting kudos in their discussions? they see that gratification through their personal commitment to a sport or team. But beign active to prevent a change? Even that action goes beyond many a loyalists personal comfort zone. While the power of the Netroots (and I mean this broadly, not in a partisan political sense but internet organizing by and large) can accomplish much, one has to wonder if fans can find satisfaction while taking action for/against a change to something they love?

Of course, what to revolt against or unite against is always subjective… It’s tradition infringement that tends to unite fans of any given sport. if Major League Baseball infringes on it’s uniforms and starts placing advertisements upon battling helmets and jersey’s – will fans do more than express disgust online and go outside their personal comfort zones? What level of grievance must sports fans experience before collectively dissenting and showing the force which they yield as a voice, as an opinion and as a consumer?

The Tampa Bay Rays have been doing much to improve their image the last few eyars since Stu Sternberg took over the team. But you want to know one quick way to tear all that down with fans who are sick of the scandals, sick of the fact baseball has been sullied by BALCO and artificially inflated stats?

Explore signing Barry Bonds.

A great young nucleus with some new veteran additions this winter… Ruined by bringing in the biggest blowhard in pro sports.

Got a post-mortem season poll for the Bucs up over at Sticks of Fire regarding the team’s direction. Please head on over there to vote, kvetch and all that jazz.

The site note I have to bring up is a change to the anti-spam plugin employed here at Boltsmag. I’ve just switched to the built in anti-spam Akismet plugin for Wordpress due to a conflict inspired by Spam Karma on my other blogs. The technical mumbo jumbo shouldn’t effect many (or any) on Boltsmag but if you suddenly find your comments locked-out, please get in touch with me over the problem.

Do the Rays really need a new stadium?

At the same time, do they really need a new stadium on a cramped location on the water that offers no parking? Continues life on the tip of the Pinellas Peninsula at an increased distance from points east?

There’s a lot to be discussed — And it’s getting discussed at Skyscrapercity.com with minor rumblings also going on at SkyscraperPage and FanHome of course. That being said, the most discussion (rambling about development, economics of baseball, the real estate bubble bursting and what not) are on the SkyscraperCity link.

There will be a press conference in little less than an hour with renderings of the Rays proposed ballpark. The St. Petersburg Times already did a mock rendering from passed-on takes of the stadium rendering. It raises more questions than answers though.

Red Tide News has been a local source for football, snark and satire regarding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the NFL. It’s undergone lots of changes over the years (along with quite a few missing-in-action periods where the site founder goes… well, MIA) but it’s still out there on them fancy fangled intertubes. Recently re-designed (and if you’d like to check out previous designs and previous stories, use the Way Back Machine) and relaunched, the local granddaddy of blogs and sports satire mainstay remains a standard for hilarity.

Since 1999, Red Tide News has been one of many, many destinations on the Internets. Once a powerful beacon of the Tampa Bay Buccaneer hooligan scene, RTN has over the years transformed into a somewhat less-powerful beacon for sports fans in Tampa Bay, bored cubicle-workers in Tampa Bay, and confused marine biologists looking for information about the algal bloom commonly referred to as red tide.

You can read more on the About page or perhaps you can just dive in and check things out yourself. There isn’t so much right now, but that’s due to the switch over.

The St. Petersburg Times blog The Heater brings you the leaked supposedly new Rays logo, colors and uniform.

My gut reaction is that I liked the green (which many people around baseball ridiculed) and that this new logo is a mix and match reminder of various logos from around the MLB world. It reminds me mostly of various San Diego Padres logo elements since 1991, it reminds me of the Milwaukee Brewers, it reminds me of the California Angels before they became Disney-fied in the 1990’s and reminds me of the Florida Marlins somehow).

Are they bad? Arguable. Are they good? Arguable. Will I go out and buy a ballcap? Not until the team shows more promise than a few games a season. That’s been my mantra since 1998 and it hasn’t yet changed.

…but this is more fun. Especially after that mockery disguised as a sporting event.

Overdue, in fact… But I will support his removal (along with Bruce Allen) cuz I roll like that. No wait, it’s more like “because he’s let the defense rot and can’t do crap with the offense, is too endeared to a non-performing coaching staff and elder players past their prime on the O as well.”

But that’s just me. Ah well…

(title changed and some other name/grammar edits because I’m a College Football idiot and don’t know the SEC from the KGB, FBI, GUI, ennui, etc)

And welcome to the AP top 25 rankings, gentlemen…

Yes it’s an OT loss for Auburn but lets be frank and honest — this was a nail-biter the whole night through (just look at the stat match-up results – the War Eagles never stood up and proved their worth). Yes, South Florida wasn’t stellar but neither was Auburn and Brandon Cox was put in a hurt-locker by the Bull defense the majority of the night.

If the Bulls are indeed ranked by Monday morning, it will be their first Division 1-A ranking since the football program at USF was incepted 10 years ago.

I moderated a discussion between Ski of Best Bucs Blog and Scott of BucStats this week concerning the Buccaneers upcoming season… Though we rambled quite a bit with the discussion and not all of that is included, you can check out part one now at Sticks of Fire…

…Part Two has now been published.

The whole thing was a ton of fun and I really wish we could have gone on for a while. Of course, giving questions and witty retorts to replies is easier than what Scott and Ski had to do in giving answers. Hats off to them.