Vince Naimoli, the man who brought Major League Baseball to the Gulf Coast of Florida as the founding owner of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, has died after a long illness. Naimoli deserves credit for many years of working to get baseball to the Tampa Bay area, first with the near-purchase of the San Francisco Giants, which he planned to move to Florida in the early 1990s. When that deal was rejected by Major League Baseball Naimoli was awarded with the expansion Rays in 1995 and the team began play in 1998.