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Rays

Belated thanks to a man who helped lift us to majors

By JOHN ROMANO
Published January 20, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - This was before the catwalks.

Before the flirtation of the White Sox and the teasing of the Giants. Before we gathered to toast Vince Naimoli, and before we came to roast him.

This was when the effort to bring major-league baseball to Tampa Bay could be found in a nondescript office near the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport with a boss and his staff of one.

This was when Bill Bunker was in charge of our hopes.

"He was the linchpin who kept the whole effort going," said Pinellas County Commissioner Bob Stewart, an original member of the Home Run Club formed in 1976 to pursue baseball. "There were a lot of great people who played a role, but his persistence helped make it happen."

It was in the early 1980s when Bunker was the executive director of the Pinellas Sports Authority, and Tampa and St. Petersburg were still at odds over where a major-league team might play.

Bunker was not the impetus behind the idea of baseball in Tampa Bay. He was not the money guy, and he wasn't the one who finally closed the deal. In the list of indispensable figures in the pursuit of baseball, he ranks somewhere behind Naimoli, Jack Lake, Jim Healey and a few others.

But, it should be pointed out, he was there in the beginning, and he would eventually devote almost two decades of his life to the cause. He was influential in helping the dome get built, and it's hard to imagine St. Petersburg as a major-league city today without it.

"The stadium had to be in place before a team would come, and Bill was one of the first to understand that," said Tampa businessman George Levy, a longtime promoter of sports in the bay area. "No doubt about it, he played a big part. He was one of the first in line, and people joined behind him."

You might know, by now, that Bill Bunker died last week. He was 68 and had faded from the public eye in recent years.

Yet, though his name is not attached to a stadium or spring training complex, his work in making the Devil Rays a reality should not be forgotten.

He was, in some ways, a one-man show. In the early days, the PSA was a group of business leaders sitting on a board without a clear direction. Bunker and his secretary were literally the authority's only employees.

It was Bunker who was the liaison with the commissioner's office and big-league owners when the area was first drawing attention as an expansion possibility. Bunker would show up at owners' meetings with his pamphlets and videotapes, constantly promoting the market as major-league ready.

"We used to go to these meetings and suck up to the owners, and try selling them on the idea of the Florida Suncoast Dome," said Alan Bomstein, a former board member on the Pinellas Sports Authority. "Bill knew what we were up against, and he was able to make inroads. He was respected. He wasn't regarded as an interloper or a pain. He didn't have the forcefulness of a Rick Dodge, but he had a believability that was important."

He was the one who sought architects for stadium plans and presented all the marketing and statistical data when the City Council was considering the building of a dome.

Later, his office was moved to a construction trailer next to Tropicana Field - then called the Florida Suncoast Dome - as the facility began taking shape in the late 1980s.

"He was never out front. He was never flashy," Stewart said. "But he was the one constant through the whole process, and he was involved with all the meticulous details. Bill always made sure things got done."

There are others similar to Bunker. Business leaders and government figures who played critical roles in the 1980s and early '90s, and who have since been overshadowed by owners, managers and players.

Yet the lack of recognition never seemed to bother Bunker. He was out of a job when the PSA was disbanded after baseball's expansion in the '90s, but he remained one of the Devil Rays' biggest supporters.

"Bill kind of got slighted," Levy said. "He was one of the first to say a stadium had to be built, and he worked hard for it. But somewhere along the line he got pushed out of the way."

Those of us who knew Bill Bunker understand the world is less sunny for having lost him. He was a bright, unassuming and inordinately thoughtful man. He was honest in ways that may have hurt him politically, and he was as loyal as anyone involved in the baseball effort.

For those who did not know him, this column is meant for you.

So that you, too, can understand what has been lost. That you can understand the role he played in helping to make this market grow.

So that you know Bill Bunker mattered.

[Last modified January 20, 2006, 01:47:16]