Hard to imagine what St. Petersburg and Pinellas County would have been without Chuck Rainey. The short man in size but always so big in ambition was at the center of most St. Pete/Pinellas pursuits in business, tourism, politics and sports. He is out of it now, retired from all those competitions, which he relished. He is at this moment in the knee-fixing part of Tampa General readying for work to substitute new limbs.

Monsignor Lawrence Higgins and I visited our old crony at TGH Tuesday. It was fun. He had a peach of a room, one deserved by Pinellas County Commissioner of nearly 30 years, including nine terms as chairman. Big, roomy and overlooking a beautiful scene in Tampa - Bayshore Boulevard.

That same Tampa that was for so long adversarial in competition with St. Pete and Pinellas for big deals in sports. Tampa/Hillsborough got most—the NFL Buccaneers, the hockey Lightning, the old soccer Rowdies, the University of South Florida programs—but Rainey and his St. Pete/Piney land got a jackpot in the big league baseball Rays, on the verge of a World Series spot.

A World Series in St. Pete, in the Dome, why not?

Do that and all those hands across the Bay will be so worth while. Worthwhile? How about great, wonderful, particularly for this bum-legged politico who fought every fight. He did not win all the scraps, but WE, the Tampa Bay area did. The Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater,
Wauchula area did. Some in the groups wanted one sport, one arena, one playing place more than the others. But, in summary, this great place in which we live wanted them all.

Rainey went through the sports, and their sites prepared one by one. His 76-year-old memory is good, not uncommon among folks who live long. Then old days are not problems, the recent ones, sometimes. 

He ticked them off—the football, which he acknowledged may be in the proper place after all. The hockey, felt could have gone either way, in St. Pete or here, remembering the giant crowd the Lightning drew in a season at Tropicana Field.

But. He added, building the Arena, named for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper while in the heart of Downtown Tampa, got the hockey, not mentioning that the man behind it all was Tampa move-down Phil Esposito.

Then, came the baseball, which went to St. Pete because of the Tropicana Dome, now the sport’s home, like it or not. I do.  Fix it up, I say. Make it better. Make it as the Rays may soon want it—more baseballey.

“I am just glad I have stuck around too see it all happen,’’ to help make it happen, sir. Rainey caused discussion, competition, got things done, as did his advocacy.

Chuck Rainey is no tourist, no late arriving expert.  He’s been here, done that. He’s been there and done that and, he’s ours. His single dad moved to St. Petersburg in 1944, from Cleveland, a favorite departure city for so many of our contributors.  His dad, a financial man, sent Chuck to the Florida Military Academy, predecessor to the Stetson Campus. Rainey to the University of Florida, into his dad’s financial field, and into politics.  Gov. Claude Kirk named him to the Pinellas County, gave him a purpose, gave him a future. 

Now, whatever Chuck Rainey may or may not have done, he served and served, for nearly 30 years, made constituents and everybody else happy and unhappy, doing exactly what this bulldog of a man thought ought to be done. 

So, Chuck, here you are, all these years later, all these battles later, with the Rays about to play in the baseball semifinals, perhaps in the World Series in your beloved St. Pete, but you may have to watch it on television from Tampa General.

“I know, I know,’’ looking at his bum leg.

“Who cares?” He said. “We are all winners.”