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Trip across bay becomes 'real good soft ride'By RICHARD DANIELSON © St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 1998 "Many fans," the Tampa Tribune's editorial page added, "would think twice about setting forth on Pinellas County's clogged roadways or driving west into the blinding sun across rush-hour jammed, and often accident-blocked, bridges to take in a night game in an impoverished neighborhood." Well, it didn't exactly turn out that way Tuesday -- especially if you listened to Hillsborough fans such as Joe Ficarrotta. "I think it's great," said Ficarrotta, a Tampa defense attorney. "I think Mr. Naimoli and everybody who put together the facility did a great job." Ficarrotta caught a ride with Floyd and Shirley Kelly of Plant City, who likewise had no complaints about the location of the stadium or the traffic. Of course, the Kellys did have an extra reason to be loyal: Their son, Kenny, was the Devil Rays' second-round draft pick last year. Still, they said they regularly drive to Atlanta for Braves games and to Orlando for Magic games, and coming to St. Petersburg posed no problem. "This is a real good soft ride," said Floyd Kelly, an assistant principal at Horace Mann Middle School in Brandon. "It's right at our back door." Not everyone, however, wanted to bother with the opening-day congestion. As the first pitch was thrown, Tampa Mayor Dick Greco was in his office at City Hall. "We went (to the exhibition game) Saturday to avoid the crowd," the mayor said in a telephone interview. Greco added that he had a busy schedule Tuesday afternoon and a night engagement that "I couldn't get out of," but said he planned to return after skipping "a game or two" to let the crowds thin out a bit. "That field looks like a postcard," Greco said. "I was very, very impressed . . . I think it's going to do a lot of exciting things for St. Petersburg and all of Tampa Bay." Other Tampa fans said they liked most everything they saw -- until Tampa Bay started losing. "This isn't good," Joe Larrinaga said as the Detroit Tigers scored their fourth run in a game they eventually won 11-6. But getting to the game, he said, "was easy." "We came over a couple of hours early and found our parking spot right away," he said. "I was actually a little impressed that it was that easy." That doesn't mean that Larrinaga wouldn't prefer a baseball team in Tampa, closer to his home in the city's Beach Park neighborhood. "I have a season ticket, but I'm still going to miss a lot of games because it's less convenient," he said. Tampa doctor Frank Massari, 48, said he would have liked to have seen more entrances to the stadium's parking lot, but he said the traffic flow to the game compared favorably with his experience getting to Kansas City Royals games. "This," he said, "is going to be all right."
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T. PETERSBURG -- Ten years ago, a critic predicted that if Major League Baseball came to St. Petersburg it would be "a dark day for Tampa and its vast and booming suburbs."
