J.C. Newman Honors Tampa Smokers With New Cigar

For three and a half decades, there was a minor league baseball team in Tampa known as the Tampa Smokers, a nod to the city’s cigar heritage. This year—70 years after the Tampa Smokers played their final game—J.C. Newman is introducing a Tampa-made cigar in their honor.

The new Tampa Smokers line debuted last night at an event at the company’s El Reloj headquarters and factory in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood. El Reloj is also the factory that makes cigars, which use an Ecuadorian wrapper over an undisclosed binder and filler blend.

J.C. Newman is introducing the Tampa Smokers in just one size to start, a 6 x 54 toro extra vitola that is designed to look like a baseball bat. It will have an MSRP of $20 per cigar and will come in boxes of 20. J.C. Newman says the cigars should be at stores “in time for the World Series this fall.” The World Series will begin in late October.

J.C. Newman will show off the cigars to retailers at this week’s 2024 PCA Convention & Trade Show, which takes place March 23-25 in Las Vegas. On hand will be a prototype humidor that is made from baseball bats. Last year, J.C. Newman created 40 humidors that were made from pieces of the floor that were used at the 2011 NBA All-Star Game. While J.C. Newman sold those humidors, the baseball bat humidor remains in a test stage.

“Baseball and cigars are two of America’s historic pastimes,” said  Drew Newman, J.C. Newman’s fourth generation owner, in a press release. “It seems only fitting to celebrate the new baseball season with a cigar that honors Tampa’s historic minor-league baseball team, the Tampa Smokers.”

At last night’s debut, J.C. Newman hosted three World Series winners and All-Stars: Lou Pinella, Gary Sheffield and Wade Boggs, who is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Tampa Smokers baseball team played from 1919-1954 in a variety of independent leagues. Five baseball Hall of Famers played for the Smokers, most notably Al López, who played for his hometown Smokers from 1925-1926.

J.C. Newman has an extensive history with professional baseball. The company, which was based in Cleveland, once sponsored the Cleveland Indians. In the 1990s, when Tampa Bay was given an expansion franchise, the Newmans—who had long since relocated to Tampa—partnered with the new franchise for a Cuesta-Rey Cigar Bar at Tropicana Field. From the Devil Rays’ first season in 1998 through the 2017 season, the Newmans sponsored the cigar bar, which was removed ahead of the 2018 season. The Newmans also once sponsored a Cuesta-Rey cigar giveaway during the seventh-inning stretch.

When the Smokers folded in 1954, Tampa was left without a professional baseball team for three years. The Tarpons arrived in 1957 and lasted until 1988. In 1994, the Yankees established a Class A team, originally called the Tampa Yankees, before being rebranded as the Tarpons. That team, a Single-A team, is one of two professional teams that play home games in Tampa. The other is the New York Yankees, who play in the Tarpons’ field during spring training.

The Rays—the team eventually dropped the “Devil” part of the name—are not one of the teams that plays games in Tampa.

While the team’s name refers to them as from “Tampa Bay,” the team plays in St. Petersburg. Tampa Bay is a harbor, not a city. In recent years, the Rays’ future home has been a topic of intense debate. The Newman family lobbied to get the Rays to relocate to Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood, but that idea—along with a proposal to move some home games to Montreal—was rejected. Last fall, the team announced a plan to move the team to downtown St. Petersburg, further away from Tampa.

Update (March 27, 2024) — Added images.