Dewayne Staats has been the television voice of the Tampa Bay Rays since the team’s inaugural season in 1998. He’s now in his 51st season calling Major League Baseball games, a career that’s included stops with the Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees and ESPN. He’s called more than 7,000 games.
Staats got on the phone to share three of his favorite things about Florida. His responses have been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Midwestern vibes: I was born in a small town in Missouri and grew up in the Midwest, with a Central time zone mentality. The values of the people you meet, the work ethic that comes from that part of the country, I think there’s a lot of that on the west coast of Florida. Tampa Bay is a major market, but it’s very livable. In many ways, it’s like living in a major market and living in a small town at the same time. It may be because so many people from the Midwest came to this part of Florida to live.
Secretly a great place for horses: We have three horses. Doc is a 20-year-old quarter horse, a paint horse, just a great soul. He’s the leader of the pack, but in a very low-key way. Then there’s Jeffrey, an off-the-track thoroughbred who can be a little flighty, but he settled right in with Doc. And we have a younger palomino named Agape. The other two have taught him some manners. I think there’s a lot we can all learn as humans from horses. We kept them in Pinellas Park for a long time. They have some great riding trails there, with wooded areas you wouldn’t expect. It’s one of the greatest kept secrets of Pinellas Park. We recently moved the horses up to the Keystone area, where they can be out on grass all day and hang around under the trees.
Rays’ underdog story: It’s one of the great stories of baseball, what the Rays have done here. They’re a smaller-market expansion team that had to figure out how to compete in the American League East, with all those established, moneyed teams. Once they got through trying to do it traditionally, they became more innovative than any Major League Baseball team I’ve ever seen. The Rays have figured out how to knock off the big markets and kick the Yankees’ asses every once in a while. There’s nothing that embodies the American spirit more than the underdog.
Someone you want to see in My Favorite Florida? Email cspata@tampabay.com.
