'I decided to do everything I could'

Lifelong soccer player and fan Salvatore "Soccer Sam" Fantauzzo remembers the day he found out the Rochester Lancers were folding. It was 1980, and Fantauzzo was at his very first pizzeria on East Main Street when he read in the newspaper that the North American Soccer League franchise was ceasing operations.

"The first thing I thought was, 'How could I let something I've loved so much leave our city?'' he says now. "They were leaving, and I did nothing about it."

So when he learned, in the mid-1990s, that Frank DuRoss, Steve Donner and Chris Economides were starting up a new professional soccer team in the city, Fantauzzo resolved to make sure the new team, the Rhinos, didn't repeat the Lancers' fate.

"I thought back to when the Lancers left," he says, "and I decided to do everything I could to help soccer in Rochester."

That's when the successful restaurateur created Soccer Sam, a boisterous, sunglasses-clad alter ego who cheered and supported the Rhinos from Day 1. Soccer Sam became the star of shows on television and radio, and now, roughly 15 years later, Soccer Sam has earned iconic status. Without Sam's enthusiastic support and showmanship, the Rhinos might never have succeeded and lasted this long.

And now that the Rhinos' future is up in the air, their fate hanging in the balance while New Jersey investor Dan Williams tries to negotiate a deal to buy the team and return it to financial stability and on-field success, Sam is still doing all he can to ensure that professional soccer stays in Rochester. Sam has collected a group of local investors who are prepared to buy the Rhinos if the Williams deal falls through.

But he's done so with a heavy heart. Sam never imagined the Rhinos would reach this point. He never thought the team would sink so far into financial insolvency that an emergency buyout would be needed to keep it in existence. For Sam, it's all a flashback to that horrible day in 1980 when he learned about the Lancers' fate.

That's why Sam believes that if the Rhinos' fiscal problems prevent them from fielding a team in 2008, the franchise will go the way of their professional soccer predecessors.

"If they didn't play this year, I don't think we'll ever see soccer be successful in Rochester," he says. "If they go dark for a year, they'll probably never come back again."

It's hard for Sam not to look back on the last few years and wonder how the Rhinos could have gone from massive success to abject failure, how a team that just five years ago was a model for minor-league soccer teams everywhere could sink so low that their very future is now in doubt.

After reviewing the past few years, Sam sees one overarching cause of the Rhinos' current tribulations.

"The biggest mistake in the history of soccer in Rochester and Monroe County," he says bluntly, "was (the Rhinos) building PAETEC Park and leaving Frontier Field."

Sam sees three key reasons why the move to their own stadium has nearly destroyed the Rhinos. The first, he says, is that the team's owners were undercapitalized from the very beginning. "They went into the (soccer stadium) project with not enough money," he says.

The second key factor was the owners' underestimation of how much Rhinos fans loved Frontier Field. Sam says things as simple as Dippin' Dots ice cream, the Rochester sports Walk of Fame, and a grassy hill families could use for picnicking drew fans to Frontier. PAETEC Park simply lacks the welcoming atmosphere, layout and affordable, quality concessions that made Frontier Field so attractive.

Finally, he says, the third reason was the way management overlooked "the love between a fan and a player." When the team changed management, coaches and location, it also changed the on-field lineup. Beloved fan favorites like Billy Sedgwick, Craig Demmin and Doug Miller were let go, leaving fans without a personal connection to the team.

When the team departed Frontier Field and moved into PAETEC Park, Sam says, "I don't think the ownership group, (general manager) Matt Ford or the employees who are there now realized why people came to the games — they came for the people and the experience and the players."

While Sam says PAETEC Park lacks the quaint charm — and ample parking — that Frontier Field had, the new stadium also still doesn't have lucrative luxury suites. The lack of such money-making suites have been a financial killer for the Rhinos, so much so that in hindsight, Sam says, "they probably shouldn't have opened the stadium without the suites." He says the team probably should have stayed at Frontier one more year to ensure the completion of PAETEC.

While he feels the team's ownership let the community and the fans down, Sam is also upset with Assemblyman David Gantt, whose strong-arming forced the Rhinos to build the stadium where it is. Sam says Gantt should apologize for his role in PAETEC Park's failure.

"I'm very disappointed that David Gantt hasn't come out publicly and said, 'This is partially my fault,'" Sam says. He adds that Gantt's lack of public support for the stadium and the teams since PAETEC's opening has also been a disappointment.

"It's unfortunate that he hasn't come out of the woodwork and offered to help them," he says.

Regardless of who's to blame for the current depressing state of the Rhinos, Sam believes it's unfortunate that the fans and the public in general are suffering for the mistakes of a certain few. He regrets that so much of the team's dirty laundry has been aired for public viewing — "I feel it's unfortunate that the public knows things it shouldn't know," he says — but he adds that the team's ownership and management erred by concealing the team's financial difficulties from fans.

"In hindsight, I wish the Rhinos would have been more upfront with the media and the public," he says.

But in many ways, that's all moot now. Sam, like the team's fans and the public, is now hoping for the best from here on out. While he and I chatted at Mona Lisa Café in Webster on Wednesday, he got a call from a close friend.

"What's going on?" he said as he answered the phone. "Do we have a deal yet?"

That deal, of course, is Williams' attempted buyout of the Rhinos. As of this (Friday) morning, the deal has yet to go through, and Sam is keenly interested in what happens, because either result — a Williams purchase or a failed deal — would mean big things for Sam.

If the deal happens, he says, "I'll hang up my sunglasses and my mic" and retire his Soccer Sam persona. Soccer Sam was initially created to market the Rhinos, but with a wealthy millionaire like Williams in charge, Sam feels the team would be more than able to do its own marketing from now on.

Sam also has personal reasons for withdrawing from the public eye, at least soccer-wise: He wants to spend more time with his family, including two young grandchildren.

But if Williams can't reach a deal with the city of Rochester and the Rhinos' main creditor, NBT Bank, Sam is prepared to bring together a group of local investors to purchase the team. If he does that, it will simply be the continuation of a promise he made nearly three decades ago.

"If Dan Williams doesn't happen," he says with memories of the Lancers' demise still fresh in his mind, "I'll do everything in my power to put together a group that keeps soccer alive in Rochester."