Vaughn's catwalk idea never took off at Trop

Hidden away in a storage closet under Tropicana Field is a 5-foot-by-5-foot piece of Rays tradition that never really had a chance.

It was last seen during the 1999 season, hanging from one of the stadium's catwalks over the spot where a baseball hit by Jose Canseco once changed directions.

If Tampa Bay vice president of communications Rick Vaughn had his way, the banner bearing Canseco's No. 33 and many more like it would dot the catwalks.

That would mean a lot of banners.

And that would be the idea.

Like many who watch the Rays play inside their home dome, Vaughn sees the catwalks as an ugly eyesore. During the team's second season, Vaughn had an idea similar to the one he had a few years earlier, when he was public relations director for the Orioles.

At Vaughn's suggestion, the Orioles mark each home run ball that lands on Eutaw Street, which runs behind right field at Camden Yards, with a bronze plaque resembling a baseball sunk in the ground and bearing the name of the batter, the date and the distance from home plate.

"That way you could stand there and say, 'Wow, this is where that home run landed,'" Vaughn said.

Vaughn actually got that idea from all the games he attended at RFK Stadium while growing up in nearby Virginia. The seats in RFK's upper deck were green. The Senators would paint one white to mark where one of Frank Howard's monster blasts landed.

While taking batting practice before the start of the 1969 season, Howard turned to Ted Williams, the Senators' new manager, and said, "Hey skip, you see those seats? They paint them white when I hit them with a home run."

To which Williams replied, "Do they paint them green every time you strike out?"

"True story," Vaughn said. "I heard it from both of them."

Back to the catwalks.

"You got these catwalks that everyone points to as a negative in the building. What if we, instead of trying to hide the catwalks, tried to enhance them," Vaughn said. "The idea was really to take something that people looked at as a negative and make it a positive. It's almost like looking at an ugly tree and saying, 'Oh, that's an ugly tree,' or putting some ornaments on it. That was my thinking."

Of course, little bronze baseballs wouldn't work on catwalks that hang more than 100 feet above the field. So Vaughn decided on white banners with the player's number so they could be seen from the stands.

He remembers making a few, some for Fred McGriff and some for Canseco. The one in the storage room is believed to be the only one remaining.

The tradition was short-lived. Vaughn can't recall why he stopped, but he thinks it was an order from someone above him in the organization. Still, he isn't sure how long the tradition would have lasted.

"It wouldn't have the same kind of permanence that Camden Yards has," Vaughn said. "It was kind of like, let's try it and see how it goes."

Jason Kubel's now-infamous catwalk single during Thursday's loss was the 108th fair ball to strike a catwalk during the Rays' 13 seasons. The C-ring has been hit 61 times, the most of the four. The A-ring, thanks to Kubel, has been struck twice.

Kubel's towering pop-up opened an old wound, making the catwalks an easy target for columnists from coast to coast and the guys on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption."

Red Sox manager Terry Francona was never a fan of the Trop's unique feature, especially during the 2006 season after the B-ring turned a long drive by Joey Cora into an out when Carl Crawford caught the ricochet in left field.

Francona referred to playing baseball inside the Trop as "putt-putt (stuff)," adding that hitting in the dome is like "hitting around a windmill."

It's actually not that bad. The catwalks aren't hit that often, just those 108 times in 1,027 regular-season home games plus seven more in the 2008 postseason. And Vaughn was only going to commemorate those hit by the Rays.

Still, that would make for some cluttered catwalks.

"I thought it would be neat to say, 'Carlos Peña hit one up there? Are you kidding me?'" Vaughn said. "We would have given some business to a banner maker, that's for sure."