Alex Editorial #1: What’s Next for Rays’ Stadium
It’s October 10th, 2024 in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Hurricane Milton has just torn through the American Southeast, including Florida’s Gulf Coast. Destruction has prevailed throughout the Tampa area, but no picture has done the damage justice quite like the collapsed roof of Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays’ beloved home for the past 20 years.
Tropicana Field, or “The Trop” as it is affectionately known, has been a beloved home of Tampa sports even before the Rays existed. The only problem is that the domed stadium named for the orange juice company isn’t even in Tampa Bay. It’s in the next-door city of Saint Petersburg.
The establishment of Tropicana Field caused controversy right from the start. In 1990, the SunCoast Dome as it was then known, was an entirely taxpayer-funded stadium constructed in Saint Petersburg. It opened not for a Tampa team that already existed, but rather to attract a team to come play in the area. The thought was that a team like the Chicago White Sox or even the San Francisco Giants would come and relocate. But both teams eventually acquired adequate stadium deals. The stadium also attracted more controversy for bulldozing houses in the “Gas Plant” area of Saint Pete historically inhabited by people of color who had originally moved to the area to work on the city’s development. The stadium was also built on contaminated soil that had to be cleaned and rumors are that there are unmarked graves underneath the area where the stadium is now.
In 1993, the MLB expanded to include the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies, balancing the leagues. The Marlins won their first World Series in 1997, and a couple months later the Tampa Bay Devil Rays took the field for the first time. In the seven year intermission at the Trop between the construction and start of the Rays franchise, both the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League called the stadium home.
Throughout its over 25 years of play, there have been some highs and lows at Tropicana Field. They have made it to the World Series in 2008 and 2020, but they have also been pretty often ranked as one of the worst stadiums in the MLB. It’s that reputation that has put the status of the ballpark in constant limbo.
I will be honest that I don’t hate the quirks of Tropicana Field. The ray tank is a cool touch that is one of the most unique features in a sports stadium, let alone the MLB. The short left field fence has also led to some big home runs (see Evan Longoria’s home run to send the Rays to the playoffs in 2011) and clutch web gems (see Andrew Benintendi’s catch in 2016). However, there are a couple fatal flaws in the design that I think are inexcusable, which I’ll continue on to explain.
First of all, the Trop sits under a slanted roof (get this, designed to save money on air conditioning) which contains four catwalks that keep it in place. The rule states that a ball that hits the furthest two catwalks or anything in between, labelled “C” and “D”, is an automatic home run. But a ball that hits the “A” or “B” catwalks, or anything in front of the “C” catwalk is a live ball, which could be a single, or in a Bananaball-inspired twist, could be an out if caught.
Second of all, Tropicana Field was one of the only stadiums with bullpens on the field. This clearly poses a safety risk, as in Tampa as well as in other stadiums, pitchers, warming up and not, have gotten in the way of a game currently going on. With the A’s officially moving out of the Oakland Coliseum for the last time, Tropicana Field remains the only active stadium with bullpens on the field.
Another huge flaw not specific to the structure of the stadium itself is that the Rays have struggled to fill the seats. In every year of the Trop, the Rays have finished in the bottom three of AL attendance figures in all but four seasons and finished inside the top seven places only once, in their first season as a franchise. This has been mainly explained by the fact that the stadium is in St. Pete, which is a 30-minute drive and journey over a bridge to the population center in Tampa.
Over the years, the Rays have tried anything they could to get a new stadium. New stadium ideas near Tampa include (bare with me for this): St. Petersburg Waterfront, Rays Park at Carillion, Ybor City and Hillsborough County, Dale Mabry Highway and Cypress Street, and Orlando Dreamers Initiative, and even more. The wildest plan, proposed in 2018, would create a situation where the Rays would play half of their home games at a new stadium in the Tampa area and half their games in Montreal. This idea not only angered both sports cities, but had one of the most adverse reactions from the media against an organization in recent memory, but MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was all for it. The plan that was the closest to actually going into effect however, was the Gas Tank Stadium, which was a $1.4 billion dollar stadium proposal, which was actually approved by the city council of Saint Petersburg.
Then Hurricane Milton rolled through. The roof collapsed with the damage being assessed at $55 million, and the earliest they could resume initially being 2026. The Rays obviously needed a new home for 2025, after weighing options like playing at their own Spring Training Field, they decided to play at the Yankees’ George M. Steinbrenner Spring Training facility, which is actually in Tampa. Just weeks later, the city of St. Petersburg decided not to fund the roof and the estimated return to Tropicana ballooned to 2028. The city also backed out of the plans to fund the roof around this time. The alleged reason for the city council flip-flopping is that the Rays would be paying rent to Tampa for 2025, not St. Pete, and the council members wanted their money.
Recent developments have now provided more clarity on the situation. The team announced that they were backing out of the Gas Tank Stadium deal in March, and this past July, the city council terminated the agreement as well. This past week, the Rays were sold to new billionaire owners who are committing to keeping the team in the greater Tampa area. Tropicana Field is projected to be all fixed up by next March or April, with the lease running out in 2028, though there have been some signs that it could be extended as every year that the Trop goes unused adds another year on the rights deal that was set to expire in 2027.
So where should the Rays go from here? Well, I think you can tell at this point that I am against them using Tropicana Field long-term, so what is the next best thing? With every other stadium idea never materializing, I think the Rays should look at what they’ve had this season. A baseball stadium that looks like baseball should be played there. This season brought outdoor baseball to Southwest Florida for the first time ever, and a chance to get away from their dark-lit dungeon and move into the bright sun.
Steinbrenner Field looked more full this year than Tropicana ever could have. This year, they averaged more sellouts (61) in the past 27 years combined (56). Yes, the capacity of their stadium this year was 10,046 in comparison to the usual 25,025, but I think it’s much better for a team to have 9,000 out of 10,000 seats full and sell out three-quarters of every game than to have 11,000 of 25,000 seats full. For the Rays to actually use Steinbrenner Stadium in the future like I am suggesting, they would most likely have to expand the capacity, which they would have the time to do if they bought it from the Yankees because that Tropicana lease runs out in two and a half years.
Now the big hurdle preventing the Rays from doing this so easily is that the Yankees obviously own the stadium now and to take it from them might be straight up theft. But the Rays are a team with a low payroll and new owners who might be eager to buy and the Yankees always have wealth and may be willing to sell. The turnover for Spring Training ballparks is sometimes around 15-20 years so a sale wouldn’t be too unprecedented.
One of the most logical things about this location, other than it actually being in Tampa, is that it shares a parking lot and area of town with the Buccaneers. If the Rays stadium were to go where Steinbrenner is now, Tampa would join Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Arlington, and Seattle as the cities where the football and baseball teams play in close proximity. The Rays would have plenty of space to move and develop and I see this as the perfect deal for the future for a young, up-and-coming team.
Sources:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/42489924/rays-say-new-stadium-unlikely-ready-2028-season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SJtK6dXAE&t=167s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzaoANc5wi4
https://www.mlb.com/rays/ballpark/information/ground-rules?msockid=14ccd65247ba632a0edac296469a62ea
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TBD/attend.shtml
https://www.collegenetworth.com/potential-new-stadium-sites-for-tampa-bay-rays-in-2025/
https://www.aol.com/articles/rays-owner-familiar-location-refrain-154000329.html
https://kellyplanet.com/site/learnstuff/pro-sports-complexes-in-the-u-s-part-1-learn-stuff/