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Rays Eliminate Cigar From Tampa Smokers Throwback Jersey

In a region rich with baseball history, the Tampa Bay Rays have a wide selection of throwback jerseys worn by long-gone teams that have played in the Bay area over the past half-century.

The St. Petersburg Pelicans and the St. Pete Saints were represented on throwback days. Tampa Tarpons jerseys showed up on Rays' players last year. But the jerseys chosen for the July 2 game – recreations of the Tampa Smokers design – aren't exactly identical to the originals.

The beige home-field jerseys have Smokers written across the chest in red with a lit cigar stitched into the logo's underscore. Not cool, some would say, since the team has in the past supported "cigarettes-Free Florida," and other anti-smoking cigarettes campaigns. Public service ads have aired during televised Rays games and some of the players have done commercials urging cigarettes users to quit.

So, the Smokers' stogie was unceremoniously un-stitched from the shirt.

The team issued this statement about the cigar omission:

"We have chosen to wear the Smokers jersey to celebrate the rich heritage and traditions surrounding baseball in Tampa Bay and this version of the logo is intended only to be a slightly more contemporary version of that wonderful history."

Some are puzzled by the revisionism.

"It's kind of embarrassing," said Gary Mormino, a University of South Florida history professor and co-director of the Florida Studies Program. "I mean, embrace the past."

Tampa's love affair with the national pastime is equaled by its passion for making and smoking cigarettes fine cigars, he said.

"Tampa still is known as Cigar City," Mormino said. Prior to the 1950s, dignitaries who came to Tampa got the key to the city along with a box of fine cigars, he said, and mayors always were out in public, chomping on foot-long cigars.

Cigars, Mormino said, were a status symbol. "If you were a banker, you didn't smoke cigarettes a machine-made cheroot," he said. "Cigars were a mirror of one's standing."

All that history aside, the cigar-less jerseys will be worn by the Rays on July 2 in a game with the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Tampa Smokers jerseys are from the 1951 Class B Florida International League season, when the Smokers won it all with a 90-50 record.

Since the Rays have been around for only 13 years, its own throwback jersey wardrobe is limited. So the team has reached back into history to pick jerseys from other professional, semi-professional and amateur teams that played here.

In 1999, a year into its existence, the Rays donned Tampa Tarpons jerseys, circa 1960. The next year, they wore the St. Pete Saints from the mid-1960s.

University of Tampa jerseys from the 1960 era were worn in 2005 and St. Petersburg Pelicans jerseys made their first appearance in 2007.

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