The Rowdies will be a kick again

Posted Mar 18, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Mar 18, 2010 at 05:45 PM

The Tampa Bay Rowdies - oh the Rowdies! - successors to the original team of Rodney Marsh and Perry Vander Beck and Arsene August, are returning next month to play in George Steinbrenner Field. The park will be adapted for soccer and is said to be perfect, so this side should pick up where the old Rowdies left off. This time a primary owner will be David Laxer, son of Bern’s Steakhouse Laxer, and like his dad, a soccer fan supporter. His dad attended almost of the Rowdies games and sat in the end zone.

It is terrific to have the Rowdies return after George Strawbridge and Cornelia Corbett owned them and campaigned for them for years in Tampa. Those were great evenings in Tampa Stadium, against Pele and the New York Cosmos, against Fort Lauderdale. Their soccer was not dull and this one will not be either, according to Mike Connell who is directing the operation for Laxer. Public dissent prevented a soccer stadium from being built in Carrollwood, but the deal was struck with George Steinbrenner for his field as a home base. As you might expect, the grass is green, the base perfect. The soccer will be good there - Steinbrenner will see to that.

The revival of the Rowdies comes at precisely the right time. Tampa is on a roll with football and golf and hockey and baseball. One day when you have spare time, go south to Bayshore Boulevard to the old Bigelow Mansion, corner of Gandy and Bayshore, and look at Tampa as you drive into the city. Study it and you will be amazed.

We are what we are, a major city that can support any major sport. We have done well in four Super Bowls and supporting the teams that have been here, plus other special sports events, such as the PGA golf tournament going on at Innisbrook now. Tampa Bay has become a star among young, growing areas. Study the Tampa skyline, and you will be taken by it. Makes you proud.

There are a lot of reasons for the wonderful growth of this place where we live, but one often overlooked is how transplants to the area are immediately embraced and welcomed. We have what they want, atmospherically, and we have our forward thinking and growth. May we never lose that.

Case in point is Cornelia and Dick Corbett, who came here years ago from New York City and have never left. They won’t leave, unless it is to snow ski at Aspen or travel the world, or spend time at their family plantation near Monticello in north Florida.

Cornelia and Dick, since arriving, have flung themselves into the growing areas of Florida. They were among the early settlers in posh Avila, in north Tampa, and Dick immersed himself in building. I remember the late Jim Kynes and I were among those who suggested to him to buy the property that is now International Mall. He bought the whole thing and developed it.

Dick has been involved in hunting and fishing rules as a member of the Florida Game Commission. Cornelia and Dick brought new life to Tampa. Cornelia was the founder of the Independent Day School and has now moved on to expedite other projects, such as the Tampa Museum of Art, the Science Museum, and whatever lands in her generous lap.

She is also into thoroughbred racing because that was a passion of her mother, who died recently, leaving her, she said, 45 race horses. She has sold a few and will race some. These are really upper strata people, the Corbetts. Dick, with whom I fished in Alaska and South America and know well, is his own man. He is a gambler, as he was when he took our advice and bought what is now that mall.

Corbett, when hunting, is a great shot, and so is Cornelia. She also is a fine golfer, good tennis player and all-round outdoors lady. She has always stayed slender, vibrant and carries her weight well. Not only that, she has never turned away from problems if one of our mayors asked for help.

Those of us who chart such development realize Tampa’s progress in many ways is because of people who moved into this community and jumped in when needed to be a part of that growth, like the Steinbrenners, like the Sykes, like the Malcolm Glazer family.

So the next time you are out on the south end of Bayshore Boulevard studying the skyline, remember that the Floridian and Tampa Terrace Hotels were once the eyecatchers down that way.

No more. The skyline is now the whole enchilada. Go Rowdies!

Babaloo!