By Jeremy Morrison
Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson was joined for his weekly press conference Monday by a celebratory group from the Blue Wahoos organization, as well as a rather large trophy, recently awarded to the minor league baseball club after it won the Southern League championship.
“I’m very happy to be the first mayor to hoist that trophy,” Mayor Robinson said. “I don’t expect to be the last, but I am happy to be the first mayor to hoist that trophy.”
Joining the mayor for the occasion was Blue Wahoos co-owner Quint Studer, who launched the team 10 years ago. Robinson recounted a recent conversation with Studer — a notable Pensacola player, one who has in the modern era shaped both the physical landscape and philosophical trajectory of the area — during which the two took note of both the Wahoos and the city of Pensacola’s stories of progress over the last decade.
“He said when people talk about potential, what they’re saying is, ‘you’re not winning,’” Robinson said, invoking a word often used in describing the municipality. “We’re no longer talking about that in the city of Pensacola because we are winning; we’re winning in both our city and on the field.”
Bruce Baldwin, former team president, also touched on this point, noting that Studer originally launched the Wahoos with community building in mind.
“He started this thing, and it was not about baseball,” Baldwin said, “it was about economic development and quality of life.”
As for winning the Southern League championship, Studer credited the Wahoos team and emphasized the magnitude of the championship win against the Tennessee Smokies.
“I didn’t realize how hard this was until I read that the Tennessee Smokies had not won the championship since 1978,” he said.
Studer also talked about the nature of minor league baseball, where a team’s major league affiliate — in the Wahoos’ case, the Miami Marlins — determines the rosters for its farm teams. This can make a manager’s job tricky in the minors, and the inconsistency makes championship seasons tough to pull off.
“This is really hard. That’s why we don’t talk a lot about it, because it’s so hard, because, you know, we have no control over what happens on the field, that’s all the Miami Marlins, they do every player, they do every move and so on,” Studer said, explaining how the Wahoos’ lineup experienced big shifts mid-season. “The players that won the first half, many of them moved on, some to the Miami Marlins, some to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, so we had pretty much half to three-quarter of a brand new team, came from Beloit area, actually, the Sky Carp.”
Studer also thanked the team’s hometown fanbase — “it’s quite remarkable” — as well as Mayor Robinson, who he said was one of the first local officials to support the development of Maritime Park and launching of the Wahoos baseball team, and also for supporting recent upgrades to Maritime Park that were required by Major League Baseball and necessary to hold on to the team.
“Mayor Robinson was for this park and this team before there was a park; he was for this before there was an affiliated team,” Studer said, “he’s the one that helped make sure that we had the turf and the lights, which were vital for us to keep the team here.”
Robinson said he felt the Wahoos had been a win for the city, not only by spurring further economic development but also by acting as a public relations vehicle to the outside world. He relayed a recent experience while hiking in Tucson, where he met a man from Cincinnati wearing a Blue Wahoos ball cap.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, Pensacola Blue Wahoos?’” Robinson recounted. “And he was like, ‘How do you know about the Blue Wahoos?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m the mayor of the city of Pensacola.’”
Young, Guns
Over the weekend, a shooting at an Escambia County youth sports complex left one man dead and another wounded. Mayor Robinson decried the incident Monday and said that the city would be looking into how to better safeguard its own youth sports complexes.
“It’s something that’s unacceptable,” Robinson said, noting that the location of the shooting was particularly concerning.
The mayor said that members of the Pensacola City Council had already approached him in regards to what measures the city might take at its own properties to ensure events are safe. The city is in the process, he said, of assessing what steps might be taken.
“We will be sure to take all measures and precautions that we need to do to make sure that it’s safe to go to those things and you can go and enjoy your children — everybody oughta be able to do that, and nobody should have to worry about gun violence at an event like that,” Robinson said.
Mayor Robinson appeared particularly troubled that those involved in the weekend shooting would have selected a youth sporting event at which to engage in violence.
“I ask you, as a human being, just to think about what you’re doing,” the mayor said. “And that’s such a wrong place, a youth event, to think about bringing guns in and to shoot somebody else, how risky and dangerous that is, with young people and families in attendance, it’s so not the right place. I mean, there’s no place to shoot another individual, but to do it in a way that risks the safety of so many other people that are just there to see their families, I would appeal to the people that are doing this, this is just now an appropriate place in any way.”
Ian Assistance
Hurricane Ian’s impact was not felt in Northwest Florida, but other areas of the state were not so fortunate.
“We were fortunate, but unfortunately, many of those in South Florida were not fortunate,” Mayor Robinson said, relaying news he had received from other public officials he knows in the South Florida area. “Good friends of mine, and I just hate to see what they and their communities have had to go through, and our hearts and prayers are certainly with them as they work to recover.”
To assist with recovery efforts in the impacted areas, Pensacola will be sending a total of eight officers from the Pensacola Police Department. Mayor Robinson said that the city’s team left Saturday and is joined by teams from the Gulf Breeze Police Department, as well as the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. Robinson also noted that the city’s fire department is awaiting word from the state about the potential for it to offer assistance in recovery efforts.
“We’re glad to be able to help our neighbors who have been impacted by the storm,” Robinson said.