Piniella sees a light for the Rays

Seattle experience tells him wins can turn struggling franchise into a hot ticket.

By MARC TOPKIN, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published May 28, 2002

SEATTLE -- Lou Piniella knows exactly what the Tampa Bay baseball scene is like these days.

Struggling team? Unappealing stadium? Apathetic community?

Piniella's been there and done that, and lived to tell, playing a large role in turning the Mariners from one of the game's most moribund franchises into one of its most successful.

So when others look at the Rays play in Tropicana Field and see a bad team in a bad market, a three-hours-a-night infomercial for contraction, Piniella sees something different.

He sees the potential for a bright future, a team that, under the proper circumstances, can flourish and prove his hometown to be the thriving market for Major League Baseball he thinks it is.

"I think the Tampa Bay situation is a lot like Seattle was," Piniella said. "I definitely feel Tampa Bay can be a very good franchise. You've got to start winning with a little more consistency, the same way that occurred here. And once that occurs you'll start seeing attendance pick up and interest pick up and it will be a good, viable major-league franchise."

Piniella is as Tampa as they come, a product of the dusty sandlots of West Tampa, a predominantly Latin section of the city. He attended Jesuit High and the University of Tampa. He has been a star player in Kansas City, where he was AL Rookie of the Year in 1969, and New York and a richly successful manager in New York, Cincinnati and Seattle, posting 10 winning seasons among his first 15, taking five teams to the playoffs and winning a World Series in 1990 with the Reds, but he'll always be from Tampa. He still has his family and his home there, plus one on Redington Beach where he planned to spend Monday before his Mariners open a series tonight at the Trop.

So when he hears people say that Tampa Bay isn't a baseball area, he shakes his head. And when he hears people say the team isn't going to make it, he knows the one thing the Rays must do to prove them wrong: win.

"If you put out a good product people will come wherever it's at," he said. "You've got to win. Tampa is no different than Seattle, it's no different than Kansas City, it's no different than New York City, it's no different than any city in the country. It starts with winning.

"People start watching it on TV, they start listening to it more on the radio and invariably that translates to more people coming to the ballpark. And once your friends start coming and your family members start coming and they start talking about it, then it gets to that point where, boy, I'm missing something if I don't go. And that's really what you have to do. You've got to get it to the point where it's a happening to go to the baseball game."

Critics pick on Tropicana Field, but Piniella -- who knows about bad indoor stadiums, having managed 6 1/2 seasons in the dark and dingy Kingdome -- said the Trop is not necessarily the roadblock to success.

"When I came here to Seattle we drew about 1.1-, 1.2-million and my first year we drew 2.1- and put over 3-million in there twice," Piniella said. "If the product is good, you can do it. Now would an outdoor ballpark be more conducive? Yeah. Absolutely."

Piniella wants to see the Rays succeed for all the proper civic reasons. But he also has a selfish plan: "I look forward to the days when I'm retired and I can go see good baseball there."

Note to Vince Naimoli: The Rays need not rush to sell him season tickets just yet.

Piniella turns 59 in August and has no plans of slowing down. He says life is good, he has no complaints and portraits of him as a kinder, gentler, mellow Lou are pretty accurate. "Really, they are," he said, a sly smile betraying his words.

The new contract he signed after the 2000 season, after some serious rumors of his interest in coming to the Rays, expires after next season, and he sees no reason to think that will be the end of his storied onfield career.

"I enjoy it, I really do," said Piniella, who has a career .537 winning percentage. "I still enjoy the wins and the losses are still upsetting. So as long as you get those cross-currents you know that you still have a lot of interest in it."

He doesn't know yet what's going to happen, and he isn't the type to speculate.

He wouldn't say if he had any interest in the Rays at the time, who instead brought back Larry Rothschild, then fired him 14 games into the 2001 season and hired Hal McRae, or if he would have any in the future. With his family (parents, three grown children, three grandchildren) here, with his pride and passion, with his connections for a good table at Malio's, it could be quite an interesting combination.

What he does say is that he wants to see the Tampa Bay franchise succeed. He allows that the team needs to spend some money and that fans need to show some patience, but he is convinced it can work.

"They can have a very good franchise there," he said. "They really can. People told me when I came here to Seattle 10 years ago, "Don't go, you're going to die there.' Actually, we've flourished here. It takes a lot of hard work from ownership to the front office to down on the field, but it can be done.

"And if it can be done here it can be done in Tampa just as well."