Despite a resume longer than the tri-oval track at Daytona after 200 laps, the dean of Tampa Bay sportscasting swears his career was a combination of luck, timing and a willingness to try new things. “I always loved sports,” Dick Crippen says. “I played some sports but I never intended to go into it. But once I got into it, I just got immersed. And I couldn’t have been happier.”
Crippen, 80, retired last week as Senior Advisor to the Tampa Bay Rays. A combination of community relations, PR, consulting, charity work, voiceover recording and lots of rubber-chicken dinners, it’s essentially the same job he signed on for in 1999, he says, only back then his title was Executive Director of Community Development (the “senior” designation, he likes to joke, is merely a reference to his grey hair).
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