DREAMING THE DREAM
Magic co-founder seeks to get MLB in Orlando
Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams kisses a baseball while giving a thumbs-up during a news conference to announce the exploration of Orlando acquiring a Major League Baseball team, at The Tap Room at Dubsdread on Wednesday. Williams proposes to name the team the Orlando Dreamers. He also unveiled a website, OrlandoDreamers.com, during the news conference to rally community support. See Mike Bianchi’s column on Williams’ announcement on
Pat Williams, the fabulously famous Orlando Dreamer, hopes to someday become Tampa Bay’s worst baseball nightmare.
Make no mistake about it, this is why Williams, the co-founder of the Orlando Magic, called a news conference Wednesday to announce that this holiday season he’s going to begin shopping for a Major League Baseball franchise.
And you better believe the shopping will start about 90 miles west, where the unhappy ownership of the Tampa Bay Rays has unsuccessfully been trying to get a new stadium built in Tampa so the team can move out of the St. Petersburg abomination known as Tropicana Field.
Williams, using much the same game plan he did more than three decades ago when he and Orlando businessman Jimmy Hewitt put together an ownership group and somehow convinced the NBA to put an expansion franchise in little ol’ Orlando, started his baseball bid Wednesday by unveiling a potential logo and potential name — the Orlando Dreamers. The name is a tribute to Orlando visionaries such as Walt Disney, Arnold Palmer and astronaut John Young — men who made their wildest dreams come true right here in Central Florida.
Williams started the news conference talking about Orlando someday being awarded an MLB expansion franchise, but he quickly made his real intentions known when he talked about baseball’s failed attempts in two other Florida markets — Tampa Bay and Miami.
“I’ll say this as sweetly as I can,” Williams said. “Baseball hasn’t worked in either city. I’m convinced this market is different.
“The Rays have eight years left on their lease. They have said they’re exploring a radical plan to play in two cities [St. Petersburg and Montreal]. … Our job is to make our package so attractive, so
luscious that [baseball] people say we’ve got to get to Orlando!”
It’s no secret basketball became Williams’ profession all those years ago, but baseball has always been his passion. In fact, Williams first tried to bring bigleague baseball to Orlando. In 1990 he recruited billionaire Amway co-founder Rich DeVos to lead Orlando’s effort to get an MLB expansion team. When that effort failed, DeVos instead bought the Magic from the team’s original ownership group.
Williams made it clear Wednesday the DeVos family has nothing to do with his current baseball effort (at least not yet) and admitted that luring the Rays or being awarded an expansion franchise is a yearslong process — if it happens at all. Before he proceeds with the massive undertaking of getting a stadium built and perhaps putting together an ownership group, Williams said he first wants to know whether Orlando sports fans are truly ready to step to the plate.
Williams says he spoke with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, and both are behind his effort. Now he is urging fans to go to his proposed team’s website — OrlandoDreamers.com — and show their support for baseball in Orlando. He also wants fans to visit the website and indicate whether they might be interested in a season-ticket plan.
“Major League Baseball needs to know that just because we have two baseball markets in this state that are doing very poorly, it doesn’t mean you neglect a third market that could be doing off-the-charts terrific,” Williams said. “What kind of thinking is that? That’s not the way I think.”
Then again, Williams is a dreamer. An Orlando Dreamer.
“They called me crazy back in the ’80s,” Williams told me. “They’ll probably call me even crazier now. Or maybe instead of calling me crazy, they’ll look at what happened more than 30 years ago and think to themselves, ‘Hey, that basketball thing worked. Maybe, just maybe, this baseball thing will work too.”
If this were anybody else other than the great Pat Williams calling a news conference Wednesday about bringing baseball to Orlando, the local media would have either ignored it or laughed at it. If anybody other than Williams were making this pitch Wednesday — without a stadium plan or an ownership group and showing up with nothing but hats, Tshirts and a website — we wouldn’t call them Orlando Dreamers; we’d call them Orlando Pipe-Dreamers.
But Pat is different. He’s proved he can turn a no-horse sports town into an NBA city. He’s proved he could turn ping-pong balls into superstars. He’s proved he can adopt 19 children, author 104 books, run 58 marathons and survive multiple myeloma — a serious form of bone-marrow cancer. How does he do it?
Why does he do it?
He hands me a copy of a poem — “The Dreamer” — written by former NBA player Swen Nater and tells me to read it. “The dreamer he never stops climbing, No matter how daunting the hill. Though the salt of his sweat it may blind him,
His soul feels the dream yonder still. And it’s golden, so golden it pulls him, Through the pierce and his terrible scream.
No hill that is high, and no fiery thigh, Can hinder the quest for his dream.”
Williams then reaches down on a table, lovingly picks up a baseball, squeezes it and kisses it — much like he once famously smooched that magical ping-pong ball that turned into Shaq at the NBA draft lottery all those years ago.
Here’s hoping Pat Williams never stops dreaming and sealing his dreams with a kiss.
Batter up, Orlando.
Let’s play ball!
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on FM 96.9 and AM 740.