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Fans bid minors adieu in St. Pete

Florida Power Park's longstanding regulars are on hand as FSL reign ends.

By LOGAN D. MABE

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 29, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- It's Timmy's world. And until Monday night's ultimate home game, the St. Petersburg Devil Rays and their fans simply lived in it.

Tim Horgan ("Hey Timmy!" to his many friends) received the greatest honor of his storied career as a baseball fan when he tossed out the first ball at the "Baby" Rays' last game at Florida Power Park.

Home of Al Lang Field. Home of the the city's last connection to the wonders of minor-league baseball.

"I've been coming to this park since '68 and I love it," said Horgan, whose booming baritone and Goofy hat made him a fixture in the rightfield stands until a broken hip put him on the disabled list two months ago.

"But it's the people who make it what it is," said Horgan, who speaks in exclamation marks. "This is my life! I love this! I love people and I love baseball!"

The feeling was mutual. After notching a wacky 12-7 win over the Vero Beach Dodgers, Devil Rays players stood in the infield and doffed their caps to the departing crowd as the PA system played, Thanks for the Memories. Next year, when the Devil Rays' Class A Florida State League affiliate is no more, fans will look back on this one as St. Petersburg's swan song with the minor leagues. To make way for realignment, the parent club sold the team and it will move to a new city in 2001.

The players will scatter to other bush league outposts in this and other farm systems.

"Well, I've really been dreading today," said Brenda Richardson, co-president of the team's booster club as she watched the final outs from her seat behind home plate. "You're going to see a lot of tears when this is over with."

Richardson and her husband Bruce, like many booster club families, officially adopt a player each year. Unofficially, they adopt them all.

"We'll still follow them," she said. "And they'll call or e-mail us. It's not just minor-league baseball, it's the fact that to us, they're like family."

Monday night closed the record books on the minor leagues in St. Petersburg. The city has had a team in the Florida State League for 46 years, dating to 1955. Before that, a team played in the league from 1920 to 1927. Along the way, eight champions were crowned.

David Van Winkle, 29, was the bat boy for the 1986 St. Petersburg Cardinals team that won the title. Monday night, he bought a ticket to sit in the same seat that his father held for 15 years as a season ticket holder. And he soaked up the memories.

"When I was 7 years old, I started off out here chasing foul balls," Van Winkle said. "This is St. Pete. Before the (Tampa Bay) Devil Rays, minor-league ball was a big night out. This was the place. I was upset when the Cardinals left, and now they're taking this away from us."

Irving Kellman, a 15-year veteran of these games, called it "sort of a heart-wrenching situation because of the close friendships among the fans. I don't think you'd find this at the Dome. This is a pretty close knit group."

For Mae and Jim Buffone, who head three generations of Buffone baseball fans attending the game, the loss was lamentable.

"I guess you could say we're crying," Jim Buffone said. "Where you going to go when you've been to the best there is. We're going to miss this place, I tell you."

"I guess we'll go to Clearwater (Phillies) or Dunedin (Blue Jays). What else are we going to do?" Buffone said. "But the people in Dunedin hate Timmy. They're old and decrepit. We're old but we like to have fun."

And fun they had, listening to Horgan and his friends ("We're the three tenors") serenade the opposing team's first base coach.

"One day we ran off 64 people," said Horgan, well aware that their rants can grate on the nerves.

Horgan, who learned his trade as a Bleacher Bum in Chicago's Wrigley Field, is the most irascible of the three. If he disagrees with an umpire's call, he hollers, "Use the good eye ump!" If a game is dragging, he'll call out, "We wanna go home early. I gotta feed my cats!"

And his favorite, the one that brings grins even to the uninitiated, is the implied threat he yells when an adult catches a foul ball: "GIVE IT TO THE LITTLE KID!"

No one has declined the advice.

"It's outstanding," said outfielder Kelvin Ryan, who homered in the game. "He's screaming very hard. He's a very good fan, too."

"This guy is the game, this is the game to me," said Rob Skiff, who took a moment to get a photo of Horgan, a man he knew only by vocal reputation. "You hear him no matter where you sit in the stadium. He's the voice."

As Horgan's friends Steve Swiontek and David Gordon pushed his wheelchair out of the park, the fans rose in a standing ovation and Horgan's voice signed off from Al Lang.

"Bye-bye, ballpark! I'll miss you," boomed the semi-retired butcher. "Thank you for letting me be a kid. I'm never gonna quit!"

And with that, a fan several rows up in the stands supplied Horgan's epitaph. "Goofy has left the building."

- Staff writer Robin Mitchell contributed to this report.

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