“I approached it with the idea that he was a cavalier, not a hairy-legged slob. The plume feather adds class, I think. I put the dagger in his mouth to add aggression and then had him wink. It is a half wink and half sneer.”
—Artist/cartoonist Lamar Sparkman (on creating the original Tampa Bay Bucs logo)
Way back on August 21, 1976 I went to the very first Tampa Bay Buccaneer home football game ever. It was a preseason game against the Miami Dolphins. They lost. They lost a lot that first season. And the second season. In fact, they lost their first 26 regular season games. (A modern NFL record.)
But it didn’t matter. I was one of the 71,718 fans welcoming a new franchise taking their first baby steps. I was 15 years old and it was my first professional football game to see in person. And I was with my dad. My mom and dad got divorced in the ’60s when I was seven, and when it was far less common than today. He lived in Tampa and would make the hour and a half trip to Orlando occasionally to spend the day with my sister and me.
But the memories I can count of my dad and I alone doing something could fit on one side of a 3X5” index card—without having to do the small handwriting thing. So that first Buccaneer game was a big deal on many fronts. I still have the program and the ticket. It was magical.
What stands out all these years later is Bruce the Winking Pirate on the cover. In case you’re unsure, he’s the one with the funky hat with a feather, long hair, hoop earring, Vincent Price pencil-thin moustache (in his younger, more dashing days), and a knife clutched in his teeth—and did I mention he’s winking? Menacing isn’t he? You’d hate to run into him in a dark alley in Barbados. He’s kind of a cross between swashbuckler Errol Flynn and one of the Village People. He had a few nicknames over the years, but let’s just stick with Bruce the Winking Pirate.
Bruce retired in 1996 for a more threatening skull and swords logo.
As quarterback Tom Brady leads Tampa Bay into the Super Bowl 55 Sunday, several versions of Tom Brady the Winking (or non-winking) Pirate have popped up online. It’s just one more feather in his cap (pun very much intended) as he heads into his 10th Super Bowl game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
I wish I could make the game Sunday because that Super Bowl ticket and program would make a nice bookend to my game one experience. Since I’ve bought Buccaneer tickets in recent years, the organization was kind enough to shoot me an email last week informing me that tickets were still available. Lucky me! But there was a catch, tickets started at $19,126—and you had to buy them in groups. (I read where a sideline ticket was going for close to $60,000.) Tickets may have gone up or down depending on demand. But one of my friends joked that the players on the field were the only ones who could afford to be in the stands.
I’ll be watching on Tv and pulling for the Buccaneers. We’ve got history together.
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles
