TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Mendez Had A Vision For Youth

ADVERTISEMENT

By JARRETT GUTHRIE Tribune correspondent

Published: January 16, 2008

TAMPA - Frank Mendez was a family man, a man of his community. Spending his entire life in the West Tampa area, Mendez, 80, passed away Dec. 30 from complications relating to prostate cancer.

Mendez was instrumental in helping found West Tampa Little League in the early 1960's doing everything from raising funds, volunteering, coaching, down to designing a logo for the Little League.

Mendez, a retired United States Postal Service worker, spent years outside as a mail carrier.

"He was always an active man," Karen Hambleton, his daughter, said. "He wasn't the type that could just sit around even when he worked all day. He'd come home and have to be out in the yard or work in the garage."

A lifetime love of baseball and a love of children led Mendez and others in the area to solicit funds to start what became West Tampa Little League.

"At that time there wasn't really anything for kids to do around here," Hambleton said. "He loved baseball and that's when he decided to do what he could to get a baseball league together."

In 1961, Mendez, along with Frank Cacciatore, approached Lorenzo "Tapi" Rodriquez for help and introduced Rodriquez to Little League. Rodriguez would become a mainstay in area Little League for the next 40 years. With his various affiliations in the community and the dedication of volunteers, West Tampa Little League was born.

Mendez was instrumental in getting MacFarlane Park to donate an area for West Tampa's first baseball diamond and then spent a numbers of years serving on the board, building facilities, coaching and volunteering.

Mendez is survived by his wife of 57 years, Josephine; his son Frank; daughter Karen Hambleton and her husband Ted, and granddaughter Kristen Stephenson.

In later years, Mendez spent the months of March as an usher for the New York Yankees during Spring Training at Legends Field - never losing that desire to be out of the house and around baseball.

Jarrett Guthrie can be reached a jguthrie@pop.tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT