Rays Baseball and Beyond: Staats' Story of Struggle and Success

Did you know Dewayne Staats and ÔBroadway’ Joe Namath were almost neighbors? Even though Staats has been around the Tampa Bay Rays scene as their lead TV broadcaster since the club’s inaugural season of 1998, I just learned there’s an awful lot about him that I don’t know (and should have always wanted to).

How do I know what I didn’t know about one of the very best mic men in the game? Simple. I recently came across a copy of Position to Win: A Look at Baseball and Life from the Best Seat in the House (originally published in 2015). What a phenomenal and addicting read.

Unlike with other books I have reviewed, when reading all 248 pages of Position to Win, I didn’t start from page one and continue in chapter order. Glancing at the table of contents, each turn in Staats’ career seemed more intriguing than the order of his career’s lineup suggests.

There’s Harry’s Town, beginning on page 101, where Staats takes us from his gig in the Houston Astros broadcast booth to working with the legendary Harry Caray calling Chicago Cubs games.

Staats’ rise into broadcasting, all the while corresponding with another baseball legend Gene Elston of the Astros, is something movies are made from. I can’t say in all my years around baseball have I ever come across a sweeter example of destiny than the relationship between Staats and Elston.

The first chapter I immersed my baseball mind into began on page 119 – New York State of Mind: The Yankee Years.

The five years that Staats covered baseball for the MSG Network from the Bronx and around the American League for the George Steinbrenner-owned Bronx Bombers’ offers so much insight into how broadcasters should be treated.

Leaving Chicago was tough on Staats, his wife Dee, and their children. Here readers learn there is a private side to their very public working conditions. This was an era when the Yankees weren’t a very good ball club. Donnie Mattingly and Rickey Henderson were there, but not much else. Even team owner George Steinbrenner was on the outside looking in while serving a two-year suspension from the game.

The working relationship and friendship developed between Staats and his color analyst (and former Yankee) Tony Kubek is priceless to discover. The first-class treatment Staats received from MSG Network Executive Bob Gutkowski is another nugget of how to properly treat employees and succeed.

Details, friends. Details are what brought me to complete all 17 chapters in two days.

Rays fans know this past season Staats called the 7,000th game of his Ford C. Frick Award-worthy career. Amazing, for sure. Nearly a half-century in broadcasting (including nine no-hitters) the stories Staats unleashes range from a simpler time of the 1960s of transistor radios, landlines, and the birth of the Houston Colt 45’s, to the modern era of slick TV sets for pre-and post-game shows and wireless communications for instant scores and highlights. What a privilege it is to ride shotgun alongside Staats, as he progressed his career to working full-time at Tropicana Field.

Even the nerd of baseball nerds could learn only so much from delving into a club’s media guide. Position to Win is the Holy Grail for baseball fans (especially Rays lovers). You are brought so deep on the inside of Staats’s career, you’ll never want to be on the outside of anyone in the game again.

Oh, yeah, about the hall-of-fame quarterback who Staats came *this* close to being neighbors with. When Staats and his wife Dee were exploring areas where to set up permanent residency, and really liking a place near Fort Lauderdale, the two-story home near Dee’s sister in Tequesta would have put them next to great New York Jet.

Why didn’t this move happen? Like all the fascinating details of Dewayne Staats’ life are up for envy and understanding, page by page, in Position to Win.