Tampa, Florida					Monday, September 06, 2010

Surprise! Winners Are Saluted On This Night
Sunday, February 20, 2005
TAMPA—The Tampa Sports Club of this city, where sports has meant so much through this half century, assembled its athletes and athletic teams the other night to toast its best of 2004 before about 1,000 celebrants in banquet. It was a dramatic circumstance at Lawrence Higgins Hall. The audience ranged from babes-in-arms to George A. Levy who was praised as the only continuous member of the Tampa Sports Club, indeed who suggested it be developed and helped so in making it become the fountainhead for all manner of sports, professional and amateur, in this Sports City that has a stately silver NFL Lombardi Trophy and an NHL Stanley Cup in its recent history. Among those in the fascinating, and fascinated, in the crowd were Monsignor Higgins himself, Rick Casares, hockey’s Brad Richards, John Tortorella, Dwight (Doc) Gooden, Freddie Solomon, Wade Boggs and Michael Clayton, as well as the parents of Gary Sheffield and David Magadan, and most of a high school football team (Armwood) that had won a State of Florida championship for a second straight year, a feat in this football-nuts part of the world of the Bucs, the Dolphins, the Jaguars, the Miami Hurricanes, Florida State Seminoles and the Florida Gators. And as the awards were announced, delivered and accepted, for much of the evening impressing most of all seemed to be the big Tampa Bay Buc NFL rookie of the year runnerup, wideout (80 passes caught), Michael Clayton, who had been the captain of the national collegiate LSU Tigers and a scholar athlete as well. He is truly strong, fast, proven and handsome youngster and arrived at the Hall on crutches. Clayton had undergone minor knee surgery the day before the dinner, but said he felt he had to be there to payback fan support of his team. He asked from the microphone then to be excused to “lay it down and catch some rest.’’ He was excused without qualification. Clayton as a hit. He was there only a day after surgery on his knee and we all know professional athletes don’t do that sort of thing for fans—go the extra mile, as he did, attending the awards affair, despite his lame leg repair. But, again, he did and it was neat. But, then came the announcement of a new category winner—the Extra Effort Award. The three first announced as competitors for the trophy were Bloomingdale High school golfer, Chelsee Richards, who turned herself in for playing the wrong ball to disqualify herself from a major tournament; Shannon Kelly, who collapsed while running cross country for Sickles High but crawled across the finish line; and Juan Chavarria, a Wharton high swimmer, unslowed by paralysis, who had pushed himself out of a wheelchair to compete for his school. Then, co-emcee Dick Crippen declared the winner top be a Tampa Catholic high school first baseman named John Crus. The applause was polite until the young man, in coat and tie, half the height of Buc receiver Michael Clayton, emerged into the clear after walking through the standing crowd, and into our sight near the podium, as Crippen told us all that the black-haired Crus played first base for his Crusaders “with a prosthetic leg.’’ John Crus was on crutches, as had been Clayton. Emcee Crippen and the podium were on a riser of about a half foot. The young man, John Crus, by then being drowned in applause and cheering, first slipped back on the riser, before getting some help from good man Crippen, a father who was careful with this striking little man. Crus leaned forward towards the tiny mike and made a little speech, thanking everyone and his parents, too, and his coaches, and his teammates of course and then he said that was about all he could think of to say, stepped back and down off the riser. As a crutch slipped again on the polished hardwood floor, a big, redhaired sports celebrity known to all there—Wade Boggs, yes, that one, the great	hitter for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Tampa Devil Rays, just voted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame at Cooperstown on the first ballot—moved quickly from a front row table seat to help another baseball player, young John Crus. Hall of Famer Wade Boggs escorted young Crus back to his seat 100 feet into the standing crowd, his progress followed on a big televison screen. Now they both got another standing ovation and surely young Crus the escort of a lifetime. Boggs enchanted all by this move and later when presented the Sports Club President’s Award, he spoke of his great career (all-time hits leader of the bigs) and his pride in his Tampa roots, he encouraged all other trophy winners to never forget their great Tampa youth and “come back home,’’ he said. Boggs, of course, has won the Professional Athlete of the Year Award previously. This one was different. This time the Pro Athlete Award went to Tampa native and New York Yankee star Gary Sheffield, while Sheffield’s uncle, Dwight (Doc) Gooden, was taken into the City of Tampa Hall of Fame along with former big leader, David Magadan. Gooden noted, when he grew up with Sheffield in Tama’s Belmont Heights and played on a world Little League championship team with him, “yes, we did beat a tin can into a round ball and played catch with it and practiced hitting with it. Yes, it did sometimes roll into our house and yes, dad did say never mind to my mother, the return on this will be worth it. And I guess, it was.’’ Gooden was a Cy Young winner, during a 24-4 season with the New York Mets, pitched a World Series no-hitter for the Yankees and now works with George Steinbrenner and the Yankees out of Legends Field, the Yankee home here. Gooden said Steinbrenner, not at the banquet the other night, but at plenty of others where he won major awards in the past, “gave me a chance to return to baseball when no one else would. I have never forgotten that.’’ All of Gooden’s life has not been rosy, but much of his childhood was with Doc Gooden and nephew Gary Sheffield growing up together. “I mean,’’ Gooden told the audience, “we even had to share a bed and a room at times.’’ No more. Sheffield was very nearly the Player of the Year in the American League for the Yankees in 2004. He is a stud hitter and was a Little League catcher when Uncle Doc was the number one pitcher on the LL title team at Williamsport. And, while the John Crus and Michael Clayton moments were warming, others were passionate and pulsating—like 24-year-old Brad Richards, the Most Valuable Player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the Lightning, who came from days of being snowbound in Nova Scotia, also despite recent surgery (stomach), to be present and receive this award. At the same table was GM Jay Feaster of the surprise NHL champion Lightning, Lightning Coach John Tortorella and Lightning executive Bill Wickett. Nearby were the Yankee tables where the Gooden and Sheffield clans sat, and Wade and Debbie Boggs, just off the media tour to present him in Boston and New York as a late summer inductee at Cooperstown. Boggs, who had helped young John Crus, knows about such things, having a sister long handicapped by multiple sclerosis. And back in the crowd, unnoticed, but saluting these amateurs and professionals, was the Pro Athlete of 1963, an early local guy who made good and came back him, Rick Casares, the star fullback of the champion Chicago Bears in the Fifties, a big man, a very big man, before there were big men who could run so fast and with the power of Rick Casares. When the awards table had been emptied, Casares, as he is likes to do, embraced those he knew and squeezed the bejeepers out of us. But, tough as he was and is, the Bear crusher of those golden days in Chicago, like others, wiped away a tear when the young gritty Tampa Catholic first baseman with the artificial leg was toasted by all of this sports tough crowd. ##
Back to Top