(The following stories appeared in Southpoint in 1990.)

Baseball in Tampa Bay? Credit Chicago's Jerry Reinsdorf

By Bob Andelman

If Major League Baseball awards a franchise to Tampa Bay this summer - as many observers in and out of the game expect - credit or blame will lie with a man from Chicago.

But first, a few words about the Hatfields and McCoys of Florida politics.

St. Petersburg's Bill Bunker and Tampa's Cedric Tallis have been attending baseball's annual winter meetings for the past decade, setting up booths at the sport's trade shows, handing out Florida oranges and begging for a team of their own. Each has his own impressive credentials: Bunker had been Florida's spring training liaison to baseball for a dozen years before organizing the Pinellas Sports Authority in 1978; Tallis spent 22 years as a top executive with the California Angels, Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees until Tampa auto dealer Frank Morsani recruited him to head the privately-held Tampa Bay Baseball Group.

Each year the friends were cast as rivals, speaking for their respective side of Tampa Bay - a region the U.S. Census officially identified as a common market in 1980. And each year, the czars and czarinas of baseball gave them the same message: nice demographics, but don't expect us to get serious until you get your own act together. Baseball owners, the most elite club in professional sports, spent years trying to convince the Bunker and Tallis delegations to swallow the bitter pill of parochialism and practice teamwork.

Baseball in the 1980s had become an issue that bitterly split the 2-million people in America's 13th-largest television market. The Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times led cheers for their home teams, and aimed Bronx cheers at the boobs across the bay.

A standoff might still exist today if it weren't for Jerry Reinsdorf, co-owner of the Chicago White Sox.

Reinsdorf, who had long been dissatisfied with Comiskey Stadium and fan support in Chicago, announced in '88 his intention of moving to St. Petersburg's domed stadium if the Windy City did not build him a new ballpark. He agreed to terms with St. Petersburg officials and began discussing radio and television deals.

St. Petersburg went wild. "Florida White Sox" bumper stickers and T-shirts were everywhere.

Meanwhile, Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko was outraged by St. Petersburg's pirating of his White Sox; he declared war on Florida and implored readers to flood St. Pete Mayor Bob Ulrich with dirty socks in protest. They did. The Tampa Tribune - in its first demonstration of solidarity with St. Petersburg after years of pronouncing Tampa as the only acceptable site for baseball - took out full page ads in response. "Next time you finish a delicious Florida orange, spit the seeds in an envelope and send them to Mike Royko," asked the Trib. (The seed spitting campaign was short-lived; the Florida Dept. of Agriculture, attempting to control the spread of citrus canker, objected strenuously to the mailing of orange seeds.)

In the end, the Illinois legislature voted the funds to build Reinsdorf a new stadium. Tampa Bay went through a period of extreme disappointment then recognized how close it had come. The White Sox had done what the shuttle diplomacy of Henry Kissinger could never achieve: they brought Tampa and St. Petersburg to the realization that together, they could attract baseball.

"Chicago legitimized St. Petersburg's efforts," according to Neil Elsey, president of Bay Plaza, the company recruiter to manage St. Petersburg's stadium and re-develop the city's waterfront business district. "Baseball and the Sox looked at this market and said it was good. Reinsdorf left $6-million on the table by taking the deal in Illinois."

The mayors of the two cities began to make appearances together, setting the tone for what has become known as "Hands Across the Bay." The Tampa Bay Baseball Group came to the Florida Suncoast Dome and signed an agreement to place any franchise it might land in St. Petersburg.

"St. Petersburg has the stadium and we have the ownership group," Tallis say today. "One complements the other."

In October 1989, St. Petersburg launched "Join the Team," a 30-day season ticket reservation campaign to show regional support for Tampa Bay baseball. Nearly 800 people a day placed $50 deposits for a total of 22,697 reservations. By comparison, Washington, D.C. has sold an estimated 15,000 reservations in four years and Orlando has picked up just 4,000 in a year.

"For years we heard baseball people say, 'You've gotta get together down there or there's never going to be a team,'" says Bunker. "Now we are together. We are now one group speaking with one voice instead of one for St. Petersburg and one for Tampa. People came up to me at the winter meetings this year and said, 'I see you finally came together - those season tickets, that's amazing.'"

Civic, community and business leaders on both sides of the Bay took the agreement on playing ball in St. Pete as a sign they could work together on more pressing issues such as transportation, education and cultural affairs. A tri-county economic development coalition, the Tampa Bay Partnership was formed to market the entire region. And people across the region are anxiously gearing up to host Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium in January.

"The goal from the beginning was to get baseball in Tampa Bay, baseball being good for Tampa Bay no matter where," says Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman. "The fact we've resolved where lets us move on and build bridges in other areas. We've done a lot of things collectively that had never happened before."

"People who thought they had dissimilar efforts and goals have now found they're in it together," says Elsey. "The quest for baseball did more than bricks and mortar and bridging the bay. It won a new feeling of what Tampa Bay's potential is. This will drive other projects."

It's too soon to say the fairy princess will live happily ever after - many people still perceive St. Petersburg as an old grey-haired lady balanced by an aluminum walker - but there are further signs of optimism.

Bay Plaza has finally begun to see activity in St. Pete's once desolate waterfront business district. A new 26-story class A office building will open in late '90, as will 139,000 square feet of new retail space and a six-story parking garage. AMC has plans to build the southeast's largest movie complex - 18 screens - in the downtown area and both Jacobson's and Parisian have looked at established department stores there. Bay Plaza has plans to build its own hotel across from the stadium - 440 rooms if a baseball team is awarded, 200 if its not.

If Tampa Bay does finally get its team this summer as it believes it will, credit will be shared by many people in both St. Petersburg and Tampa. But the real hero will always be a man from Chicago. Jerry Reinsdorf.

SECOND DRAFT OF SAME STORY:

There are a lot of things Americans will go to war over: taxation without representation, ethnic and racial oppression, drugs, communism and major league baseball. Baseball? The quest for a franchise between Tampa and St. Petersburg bitterly split the 2-million people in America's 20th-largest market for more than a decade, turning Tampa Bay into a watery Berlin Wall of east/west parochialism.

Tampa Bay became a leading contender for baseball - alongside Denver and Buffalo - about the same time it outgrew its Shady Grove Retirement Hotel image as God's waiting room. Its population now tops Miami/Ft. Lauderdale's and doubles Orlando's. Its untapped television market ranks 13th in the country. And St. Petersburg opened the 43,000-seat Florida Suncoast Dome in March as a baseball companion to Tampa Stadium, home of the NFL Bucanneers.

But the Bay area's largest cities were so antagonistic toward one another they couldn't agree on the time of day, let alone where and how to play ball until just recently. Even the czars and czarinas of baseball told the two sides of Tampa Bay to start acting like a team if they ever wanted a franchise to call their own. Not that expansion has had anything resembling a timetable; the last time baseball added teams, Jimmy Carter was president and two northern cities (Seattle and Toronto) got the nod.

A standoff might still exist today if it weren't for Jerry Reinsdorf.

Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago White Sox, announced in '88 his intention of moving to St. Petersburg's under-construction domed stadium if the Windy City did not build him a new ballpark. St. Pete had rolled the dice on a $100-million stadium to take advantage of just such a situation. The city went wild on Reinsdorf's declaration. "Florida White Sox" bumper stickers and T-shirts were everywhere.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko was outrage. He declared war on Florida and implored readers to flood St. Pete Mayor Bob Ulrich with dirty socks in protest. They did. The Tampa Tribune - in its first demonstration of solidarity with St. Petersburg - urged its readers to spit orange seeds in an envelope and send them to Royko. (The spitting was short-lived; the Florida Dept. of Agriculture, attempting to control the spread of citrus canker, objected strenuously to the mailing of orange seeds.)

In the end, Illinois gave Reinsdorf a new stadium. Tampa Bay was depressed; even the water tides seemed low. But the White Sox had done what the shuttle diplomacy of Henry Kissinger could never achieve: they brought Tampa and St. Petersburg to the realization that together, they could attract baseball.

"Chicago legitimized St. Petersburg's efforts," according to Neil Elsey, president of Bay Plaza, the company recruiter to manage St. Petersburg's stadium and re-develop the city's waterfront business district. "Baseball and the Sox looked at this market and said it was good."

The mayors of the two cities took the reunification initiative and began to make appearances together, setting the tone for what has become known as "Hands Across the Bay." The Tampa Bay Baseball Group - a potential franchise ownership group led by developer William Mack and auto dealer Frank Morsani previously committed to Tampa - came across the water and signed an agreement to place any team it might land in St. Petersburg.

"St. Petersburg has the stadium and we have the ownership group," says Cedric Tallis, TBBG executive director and former New York Yankees exec. "One complements the other."

In October 1989, St. Petersburg launched "Join the Team," a 30-day season ticket reservation campaign to show regional support for Tampa Bay baseball. Nearly 800 people a day placed $50 deposits for a total of 22,697 reservations. By comparison, Washington, D.C. has sold an estimated 15,000 reservations in four years and Orlando has picked up just 4,000 in a year.

It's too soon to say the fairy princess will live happily ever after - many people still perceive St. Petersburg as an old grey-haired lady balanced by an aluminum walker - but there are further signs of optimism.
Bay Plaza has finally begun to see activity in St. Pete's once desolate waterfront business district. A new 26-story office tower will open in late '90, as will new retail space. AMC has plans to build the southeast's largest movie complex - 18 screens - in the downtown area. Bay Plaza has plans to build its own hotel across from the stadium - 440 rooms if a baseball team is awarded, 200 if its not.

"People who thought they had dissimilar efforts and goals have now found they're in it together," says Elsey. "The quest for baseball did more than bricks and mortar and bridging the bay. It won a new feeling of what Tampa Bay's potential is. This will drive other projects."

Even if baseball doesn't come, civic, community and business leaders on both sides of the Bay took the agreement on playing ball in St. Pete as a sign they could work together on more pressing issues such as transportation, education and cultural affairs. A tri-county economic development coalition, the Tampa Bay Partnership, was formed to market the entire region. And people across the region are anxiously gearing up to host Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium in January.

"The goal from the beginning was to get baseball in Tampa Bay, baseball being good for Tampa Bay no matter where," says Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman. "The fact we've resolved where lets us move on and build bridges in other areas. We've done a lot of things collectively that had never happened before."