TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

As Rays' Star Rises, Ferg's Bar Shines

ADVERTISEMENT

By STEVEN GIRARDI sgirardi@tampatrib.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 18, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - His now-famous sports bar won't open for another four hours, but Mark Ferguson is operating at full speed.

Dressed in shorts, sandals and a light blue Ferg's Sports Bar and Grill polo shirt, he is directing set-up crews, clean-up crews and beer trucks out behind the restaurant - when he doesn't have a cell phone to his ear.

It's only 9 a.m., but everybody is in a hurry.

"We're trying to get ready for tomorrow's game," Ferguson said Friday morning, taking a moment's break.

These days, that's a lot bigger chore than it used to be.

Ferg's bar, at 1320 Central Ave., is party central for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball games, played across the street at Tropicana Field.

In the bad old days, when the team was losing 90 to 100 games a year, it didn't require much effort to prepare the bar, Ferguson said.

Now, with the Rays in the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, it's around-the-clock action, from setting up in the morning, closing up early the next morning to starting all over at daybreak.

During the home playoff games, 15,000 to 17,000 people pass through Ferg's - some for a quick beer, others to stay through the whole game. He has a crew of about 80 people - up from a normal day of about 30 - who will serve food and drinks to customers in the bars, in the parking lots and on the sidewalk.

Even Thursday night, with the Rays playing Game 5 in Boston, the place was jammed with fans watching TV and ready to celebrate the possible series-clinching game for the Rays.

Alas, the Rays couldn't hold on to win, so "we'll do it again Saturday," Ferguson said.

"I haven't had a day off in four weeks," he said, remembering he has an 11 a.m. interview with ESPN2. They want to talk about - what else? - the Rays and his bar.

These are exhausting but sweet times for Ferguson, a 51-year-old former middle school teacher who took a chance on this place before the Rays even existed.

After years of being the only pub in the neighborhood, he's getting some payback.

"He deserves every bit of it. There were some pretty lean times," city Councilman James Bennett said. "It's become the hometown bar - the Cheers of the town."

Ferguson opened in a converted gas station in 1992, anticipating that Major League Baseball soon would arrive at the new, but empty, Florida Suncoast Dome. Like many people, including public officials who built the dome on speculation, he was wrong.

It would be six more years before baseball came to town.

During that time, Ferguson kept his day job as a teacher and worked the 75-seat bar on afternoons, nights and weekends. He became famous as the guy who staked his future on baseball and the dome, and was left stranded. News reporters flocked to him every time there was a rumor of another team coming to the dome.

Along the way, the dome managed to book just enough events to keep him afloat.

It started in 1993, when the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team moved in and had a three-year stay, including a playoff run that drew regular crowds in excess of 20,000 people.

"That saved us," Ferguson said. "And we learned how to serve large numbers of people."

College basketball tournaments followed - including the NCAA Sweet 16 playoffs in 1998 and the Final Four in 1999 - and he knew just how good it might be when Major League Baseball was playing 81 games a year there.

The Rays started playing in 1998, and business took off. Two years later, Ferguson was out of teaching and a full-time barkeeper.

He built a second floor on the old service station and an open-air lounge on the west side. He has 5,000 square feet of air-conditioned space, 7,000 square feet of patio space, and parking lots that for special events "can add another 2,000 people."

The sports bar dream was working out. "That's what we waited for," he said.

But as the team failed to win season after season, the "roller coaster," as Ferguson calls it, was beginning to dip. "Until this year." With the Rays in the playoffs, it's climbing back up.

On game days, the place is like a carnival midway, with souvenir and shirt vendors, sidewalk chalk artists, live radio show broadcasts, people spilling into the parking lots, the sidewalks and the streets, and lots of beer.

Fans come before the game and after the game, and hundreds more stay there to watch: "All the people who don't have tickets, but want to be near the excitement," he said.

Ferguson is working from 7 a.m. one day to 2 a.m. the next. "I love it," he said. "It's great."

And, he said, he expects there is more to come.

"If we're in the World Series, it's going to be off the charts," he said. "It's going to be crazy."

Reporter Steven Girardi may be reached at (727) 451-2333.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT