Wild Bill And Pinetop Walk The Walk

By STEVE OTTO

Published: May 11, 2007

It's just two guys, Wild Bill Minahan and Scott "Pinetop" Peterson. I don't even think they know each other. Why would they? Minahan was a serious coach who once led his Jesuit Tigers to a state football title. Pinetop used to play for a band called the Quivering Rhythm Hounds and plays sports while wearing a fake corncob cap in honor of his Nebraska Cornhuskers.

But they do have this in common. They walk the walk. They give back to all of us.

There are plenty of causes out there. You can't make it through the day without somebody hitting you up for some cause. And I'm not putting any of them down. America is the most generous country on the planet. We not only donate, we volunteer.

Usually there are organizations around to jump-start or even do the fundraisers themselves. That could have been the case here as well, but Wild Bill and Pinetop are the ones that make these things go.

Today is Minahan's day.

The coach has everything wrong with him. His transplanted kidney is getting old, he has that pacemaker and some other gadget plugged into his heart, and he isn't as mobile as he used to be. In fact, he skipped this year's U.S. Transplant Games for athletes who have had transplants, where he used to clean up on the medals.

That hasn't prevented him from planning a family trip for later this summer with his colleen Martha and a bunch of other family members to Ireland, where he will surely out-blarney even those who hang around the Blarney stone.

Tip The VIP

Today is a day he has worked on each year for the past nine years. If you don't have lunch plans yet - and I hope you don't - bring some friends over for lunch to the Spaghetti Warehouse in Ybor City (1911 N. 13{+t}{+h} St.), where Wild Bill is hosting his ninth annual "Tip-The-VIP" fundraiser, with all the money going to the Kidney Foundation. Wild Bill and his wife are the workers behind this one.

Every year, they bring in a bunch of low-budget celebrities, like radio personality Tedd Webb, Ernest Hooper from the St. Petersburg Times, Dave Wirth from Channel 10, the legendary Bucs fan "Big Nasty" and me. All the money raised in tips goes right to the Kidney Foundation.

Scratch My Back

The "Skipperdome," that really interesting venue out behind Skipper's Smokehouse, is where Scott "Pinetop" Peterson will host his 11{+t}{+h} annual Scratch My Back fundraiser for the Humane Society on May 27, which is Memorial Day weekend.

Pinetop started the event after his black Lab Molly died from heatstroke when a friend who was watching the dog left her in a locked car.

The event also is a way to remind people of the dangers of leaving pets and children inside automobiles, where the heat can turn deadly in just minutes.

And yet it still happens every year.

This year, Pinetop is bringing in the well-known Damon Fowler Group and maybe my favorite Tampa rock 'n' roll band, Johnny G. Lyon. Talk about a great way to spend a late Sunday afternoon.

I mean, you sit outside or in the shelter at the Skipperdome, order up some fried oysters and a cold one and listen to those guys, and you know life is good.

Steve Otto's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.