St. Petersburg Times, March 10th 1995

And so, after nearly 20 years of wooing the big leagues, Tampa Bay finally got a professional baseball tenant on Thursday for its goofy-looking dome.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Already the butt of national jokes for its long-empty ThunderDome - the downtown stadium that resembles a giant tilting flying saucer - Tampa Bay now must wrestle with having its image forever linked with a bat-like fish that thrives in the darkest reaches of the sea.

"God help us," said David Moore, a local insurance adjuster. "Imagine: kids running around the neighborhoods with horns on and making like devils or some stinging fish. What was anybody thinking when they came up with that name?" Even as thousands took off from work to celebrate the area finally getting a major league team - at least five previous attempts failed - fans darkly wondered what their first Opening Day in 1998 would look like.

Would hawkers sell Red Hots in the stands? some wondered. Should they buy pitchforks and have the ends seered coal-orange? Does the team prefer short or long horns? Some even suggested calling the team's mascot "the devil's advocate."

Christian groups are reportedly incensed over the team associating itself with a Satanic-sounding creature. And some parents say it will be a cold day in you know what before their kids run around with Devil Ray paraphernalia on.

"To think, after 20 years, this is the best we can come up with," said free-lance author Bob Andelman, who wrote a book, Stadium for Rent, about the region's pursuit of baseball.

The team's owners, seeking to soften the shock, unveiled the Devil Rays' logo in Palm Beach, where major-league owners formally approved the expansion franchise on Thursday.

Tampa Bay TV stations cut into the soaps to televise the speech live.

Sounding more like a marine biologist than a guy who made a fortune in the glass-jar business, lead owner Vince Naimoli launched into a long-winded explanation about why his group paid $130 million for a baseball team only to name it after an ob-scure, shy sea creature.

Focus groups showed fans liked the name "Ray," Naimoli said. But he had problems with the "Stingray" and -"Bat-ray" names suggested by fans because those fish are mean guys who hurt people and other sea creatures.

"Certainly, we didn't want a harmful fish," Naimoli explained.

If fans are hung up on the devilish nickname, Naimoli seems ready to ditch it in favor of the creature's larger version, the Manta Ray.

Naimoli even says he's willing to put that to a vote by the fans.

Urging patience, Naimoli asked fans to look over the team's logo, conveniently displayed on black and purple hats and T-shirts being hawked all over town.

"It's going to be a knockout," Naimoli predicted. "We are told this will be the best-worn name, the best-worn logo in all of sports."

By nightfall, the Devil Ray paraphernalia became the hottest-selling thing since The Lion King video went on sale last week.

"I've been waiting since 1986," said Henry Ehrman, 59, first in line to buy Devil Ray garb at a JCPenney.

For much of the last two -dec-ades, this region of 2 million people has done almost every-thing to woo baseball. It failed in attempts to gain an expansion team or buy existing franchises from Chicago, Seattle, Texas, and San Francisco.

The stadium, completed in 1990 with $126 million in utility and tourist taxes, was supposed to be the crown jewel to finally lure the big leagues.

But for years the stadium sat virtually empty. City officials even changed its name to ThunderDome to try to change its luck. Quickly, "Blunder Dome" became its derisive nickname.

Now the stadium finally has its primary tenant.

Even though 30,000 season tickets and nearly all of the 50 skyboxes are reserved, it will take $30 million - for scoreboards, turf, dugouts - before the 42,000-seat stadium is ready for baseball.

After the last deal to buy the San Francisco Giants fell through in late 1992, Naimoli and investors sued Major League Baseball for a billion dollars. Fans seethed, suspecting that Florida Marlins owner H. Wayne Huizenga somehow sabotaged the deal to avoid competition for his team.

On Thursday, Naimoli's suit was all but forgotten. Not so the hatred for Huizenga, the Marlins and South Florida in general.

"Take that, Wayne," transplanted New Yorker Dick Keyes said as he blew puffs from a celebratory cigar.

Keyes was occupying a stool in a jam-packed El Cap - the shot-and-a-beer joint that has been home for the local baseball -cog-noscenti since the days of Harry Truman.

At 12:55 p.m., when the long-awaited news bulletin finally flashed across the television, bar owner Frank Bonfili quit serving 90-cent Bud drafts and instead poured two-buck-a-bottle New York champagne into whiskey glasses.

"Wayne, you're not going to be able to screw us again," piped up Wayne Galasso, who was celebrating his 44th birthday with the birth of the Devil Rays.

Bonfili's regulars hope the Devil Rays will join the National League so the team can become a natural rival of the Marlins.

"The Marlins, that's who we want," said fan Jill Literati, who quickly washed down the dreaded "M" word with a cold one. "I really dislike them."
Illustration

PHOTO; Caption: AP photo/PETER COSGROVE (color) Shoppers at a JCPenney store in St. Petersburg grab up Tampa Bay Devil Rays merchandise as fast as they can on Thursday.