At some point during each season most Major League teams will break out throwback uniforms for a game to honor past glory from the franchise’s history. When you’ve only been a franchise since 1998 you don’t have quite the selection of uniforms to choose from so the Tampa Bay Rays are taking a different approach. For throwback games they have been wearing uniforms of other baseball teams that have called the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area home in the past.
The team of choice for the game to be played July 2nd against the Cardinals is the Tampa Smokers. The Smokers played in the Florida International League before it eventually folded in 1954. There has been one noted alteration to the front of the jersey. The original jersey contained a cigar that will be omitted from the version to be worn in a few weeks. The organization’s support of anti-smoking campaigns led to the decision to go without it.
Original
2011 version
The Rays issued a statement regarding leaving the cigar off the reproduced uniform:
“We have chosen to wear the Smokers jersey to celebrate the rich heritage and traditions surrounding baseball in Tampa Bay and this version of the logo is intended only to be a slightly more contemporary version of that wonderful history.”
Despite the stance taken by the team, some are not happy at the decision to not wear the uniform exactly as it was in 1951. Gary Mormino, a history professor at the University of South Florida, is one of those people. He recently spoke with the Tampa Tribune:
“It’s kind of embarrassing. Tampa’s love affair with the national pastime is equaled by its passion for making and smoking fine cigars. Tampa still is known as Cigar City. Prior to the 1950s, dignitaries who came to Tampa got the key to the city along with a box of fine cigars, he said, and mayors always were out in public, chomping on foot-long cigars.”
In this battle of Major League Baseball organization vs. displeased fan, the organization wins. When the Rays come out of the dugout on July 2nd they will be wearing a cigarless version of the uniform sported by the 1951 Tampa Smokers team that went 90-50 and won the league.
Cigar issue aside, I like what the Rays have done in honoring past teams that have called the area home. In 1999 they wore Tampa Tarpons uniforms. The Tarpons played in the Florida State League from the 1950′s through the late 1980′s. In 2005 they wore the jerseys of the University of Tampa. Uniforms of the St. Petersburg Pelicans were worn for a game against the Astros in 2008. The Pelicans won the championship for the 1989-1990 season of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, a winter league designed for players 35 years and older.
This year’s jerseys will be auctioned after the game with proceeds going to the Moffitt Cancer Center and the Rays Baseball Foundation.
PC gone wild. Wear the proper uniform or don’t wear at all.
Rich baseball tradition? HA!
In Tampa Bay the Rays have to give away free tickets to their games, just to fill some seats.
They should go back to uniform of the Tampa Bay Tampons.
I think it’s a great idea. If you don’t like the name, don’t come to the game. If I was in Tampa, I’d go just to protest the PC crowd being such jerks; but since I’m not in Florida, I’ll just go to my porch and have a “Have A Tampa” cigar and a chat with my buddy George Dickle. He wears number 12.