Subject: "Sometimes the Devil you know ..." Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 18:57:40 -0400 From: Don Dudley Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. To: Don Dudley The weekend odyssey continued Saturday evening at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg Fla. I had hoped to be guided by one of my Brother's pigeon buddies, who he's visited multiple times in Tampa, but that fell through. My efforts to hook up with my Cousin Martin the night before were fruitless. Tropicana Field opened in 1998 after an $85 million expansion/facelift when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays came into existence (along with the Diamondbacks). The field was originally opened in 1990 as the Florida Suncoast Dome. With the arrival of the NHL expansion Lightning, it became the ThunderDome in 1993. It has hosted many different events, notably the 1999 NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four, won by UConn. The roof is lit orange after the Devil Rays win at home, symbolic of its sponsor, Tropicana Dole Beverages. It is slanted at a 6.5-degree angle, dropping 140 feet lower at the outfield walls where the flight of balls is lower than over second base. This reduced the construction cost and decreased by 16.8 million cubic feet the air volume that requires climate control. The structure is designed to sustain 115 mph winds. The Trop's eight-story rotunda was designed using the 1913 blueprint for the Ebbets Field rotunda. Coincidentally, the asymmetric outfield dimensions are very close to those of the Brooklyn Dodgers' old home. You don't have to be in Tampa-St. Pete's tropical weather very long to realize that many games would be postponed without a covered stadium. It rained hard before, during and after Saturday evening's game. In driving back and forth across the state, I found part of the supposed 51% of the country that's not having a drought ;-). The Trop has all-dirt basepaths and in 2000, introduced FieldTurf, a 'la University of Washington, Nebraska, Holyoke High School and, maybe soon, Westborough High School. FieldTurf combines blades of artificial grass with a specially patented infill mixture of sand and ground rubber. I guess it wouldn't pass Richie "Call Me Dick" Allen's "If cows can't eat it, ..." test, but for baseball it is a great improvement over "traditional" turf. "In keeping with baseball's traditions" (?), the bullpens have been moved to the field. The Catcher's Club seats behind the backstop are only 50 feet from home plate, some of the closest in the major leagues. For $25, I sat 25 rows up looking down the third base line. They have really gone all out to allow an experience besides sitting in your seat and watching the ball game. E.g., there's the Cuesta-Rey Cigar Bar; I chose not to go near there ;-). Apparently MLB had some people tour all the ball parks and the Trop was rated first for total fan experience. There is a vast variety of food; I stayed out of the various Lounges, Clubs and Rooms, deciding on Shorty Burgers, four for $7. There were several memorabilia items in a silent auction that I checked out, but somehow a used Steve Cox bat, already at $175, didn't do it for me. Even though he only played there two of his 18 years, the Devil Rays have retired Wade Boggs' #12. I guess he did get his 3000th hit there in 1999, but pretty cheap. Speaking of retired numbers, has anyone noticed that all of the Red Sox numbers (1 - Doerr, 4 - Cronin, 8 - Yaz, 9 - Teddy Ballgame & 27 - Pudge) are either perfect squares or perfect cubes? I didn't notice this until the August 9th Twins game. I guess that's because that night I was with Leah (#7) and her friend Kara (#4), who are absolutely obsessed with discovering their field hockey numbers anywhere they can. After announcing the lineups, the public address announcer to encouraged us to "Catch some Rays." I really enjoyed the game, at least until two outs in the ninth when small ball gave way for the most part to steroid-suspect power ball. The Devil Rays motto is "Heart and Hustle," exemplified by Randy Winn, who, as their lone All-Star, was pictured on the give-away poster, and Carl Crawford at the top of their lineup. I guess you're sort of forced into small ball when your cleanup hitter is hitting .232 with 15 HR and 43 RBI (in 73 games). The Devil Rays went to maligned closer Esteban Yan to protect a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning. The boos were resounding as he started the journey to the mound. The guy behind me, a pretty avid fan from nearby Bradenton, asked me what he was missing with all the booing. I knew Yan had blown some saves. (I looked it up later and he's blow seven in 22 opportunities, almost one-third, and four of his last five.) After my comment regarding fast National League play at Pro Player the night before, Yan was within one pitch of ending the game in something like 2hr, 23 min! No wonder I liked this game. But he gave up a homer to Brent Mayne. The decibels increased when Neifi Perez jerked a double to right, but Yan got out of it by getting pinch hitter Aaron Guiel on called strikes. Tampa Bay got Jesus Colome up in the bullpen in the 10th inning as Yan continued. Now Jesus, mind you, had an ERA of well over 7.00 (now it's over 8.00) flashing on the scoreboard, so I wasn't thinking he'd be a particularly safe alternative to Yan. (I looked up his saves after the game, and he has blown all five of his opportunities!) That's when the wife of the guy behind me uttered the subject of this email, which turned out to be oh so prophetic. She happens to work for Tropicana. Her husband is a Cincinnati Reds-loving geologist with a beautiful East Tennessee accent. Colome, the Devil we didn't know, came in for Yan in the 11th, to his own chorus of boos. He survived the 11th when Perez popped up a squeeze bunt and got Joe Randa doubled off third. But in the 12th (coincidentally, my scorecard had 12 innings), Mike Sweeney hit a three-run homer, followed by a Raul Ibanez solo shot to put it away for the Royals, 7-3. The total time of the game was 3hr, 49 min. By that time, there must have only been 1,000 of the original 10.892 fans present. Next: the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Regards, Don P.S. These reports are archived at http://runyonfield.org/Baseball/