George M. Steinbrenner Field, Tampa (MLB #15 - The aftermath of Hurricane Milton)

This is our hurricane trip.

For one thing, we are going to Florida and Georgia in April and early May, rather than August or September, because, well, we’ve never been in a hurricane, and don’t see any need to start now.

But there are a couple of hurricanes that will be on our minds this trip. After Hurricane Helene devastated the Diamondbacks’ playoff hopes (more about that next week), not to mention the city of Asheville, N.C., and assorted other places during the last week of the regular season in 2024, Hurricane Milton came along about two weeks later and hit St. Petersburg, taking the top off the Rays’ Tropicana Field, cutting the bottom out from under a deal to build a new stadium in St. Pete, and setting in motion a chain of events that hasn’t come close to playing out yet.

That’s why we went to a game tonight with the logo of one team on the banners surrounding the stadium, and that of one of their archrivals on the seats at the end of every aisle (see the picture).

Tropicana Field (“the Trop”) is one of the stadiums I’d never been to that I really wanted to see. It’s not because it’s supposed to be a great place to watch a game. On the contrary, it, along with the Oakland Coliseum, where we attended a game last year in its final season as an MLB stadium, have had the reputation for several years of being the two worst places to watch a game in the majors. It’s the only full-time indoor stadium (as opposed to several stadiums with retractable roofs) in the majors, draws small crowds, and apparently has no redeeming qualities. 

Unlike the Sacramento A’s (they’re just listed as “Athletics” in the standings, but I don’t know why they won’t admit to where they play), the Rays have been a very, very good team the last few years. They haven’t won a World Series, but they’ve made the Series twice in the last 20 years, and are frequently in the playoffs, despite having a low payroll. Their attendance has been abysmal, though. It peaked at 14^th in the majors in their first year of existence, 1998. By comparison, the Arizona Diamondbacks, also debuting that year, finished 3^rd. However, it could be argued that the Rays would draw better if they had a better stadium. So they’ve been negotiating for the last few years with local governments, particularly that of St. Petersburg, to get a new stadium, negotiations given some urgency by the fact that the Rays’ lease expires in 2028. Last summer, it appeared that a deal was in place for $1.3 billion stadium, more than half of which would have been funded by the team. But then came Hurricane Milton.

When Milton hit St. Petersburg in early October, with winds of 100 mph, portions of the Teflon roof were shredded, and then the wind and rain went to work on the interior of the stadium, including offices. Instead of being a headquarters for those responding to the hurricane, as originally planned, the stadium became its best-known victim. Photos show a field covered with bits of roof and offices devastated by the combination of wind and water.

George M. Steinbrenner Field

It was clear the stadium couldn’t be repaired by the start of the next season (i.e., this year), so the Rays went looking for a temporary home. George Steinbrenner Field, the largest Spring Training stadium in Florida, and just across the bay in Tampa, was selected.

There are four obvious problems with that.

* First, it’s a Spring Training stadium, with a seating capacity of only 11,000. Even with the Rays’ poor attendance, that’s only two-thirds of their average crowd last year.

* Second, it’s in Tampa, not St. Pete, the city with whom the Rays have been trying to negotiate a stadium deal.

* Third, it’s an outdoor stadium, which is fine in March during Spring Training, but uncomfortable (literally) in late summer when it rains every afternoon. MLB rearranged the schedule so that the Rays will play 47 of their first 59 games at home, but then will be on the road most of the rest of the season.

* Finally, it's the Spring Training stadium of one of the Rays’ biggest rivals, the New York Yankees, so there are reminders of the Yankees, even though the Yankees and Rays did an admirable job of trying to make it feel like it’s the Rays’ stadium in the four days between the end of Spring Training and the Rays’ home opener. In fact, there are lots of Rays banners, the gift shops have Rays’ paraphernalia, and the only reminders that it belongs to the Yankees are the name (Steinbrenner owned the Yankees for 37 years before he died in 2010) and the Yankee logos at the end of each row of seats.

The reviews of the Rays’ attempts at using Steinbrenner Field are mixed. They have had a 36% drop in average attendance so far this year, but that’s not quite fair, since they are playing before average crowds of  over 10,000, more than 90% capacity.

The Rays’ next stadium

What about the new stadium? After Milton, things got complicated. With the expenses incurred by the hurricane, the politicians became leery of the deal, and the timeline was pushed back, which likely would have led to cost overruns, which the Rays would have had to absorb (according to the terms of the deal), so the team pulled out in March of 2025.

In early April 2025, the St. Pete city council voted to repair the Trop, as obligated in the current lease, so the Rays may be moving back there next year. I don’t know if we’ll go to a game, just to check it off the list.

The next thing in the news was the announcement that the Rays are selling pieces of the destroyed roof for $15 apiece. County Commissioner Chris Latvala, a vocal critic of the Rays, has posted about the Rays trying to make a buck by selling garbage, but in the Rays’ defense, they have said that the proceeds go to the Rays Foundation, where the money gets spent not on the team, but on community projects. The only giveaway opportunity we’ll have on this trip was at a Jacksonville AAA game, T-shirts that advertised a local dinosaur animatronics show, and didn’t even mention the team, as far as we could tell, so a piece of the Trop’’s roof seemed like it would be a nice souvenir. So when there was a Rays Foundation stand right after we got inside the stadium, we asked.

The woman at the stand said she didn’t know anything about it, and asked a younger guy at the stand who said he’d heard about it on the internet, but they didn't have any. But maybe we should check the “Authentics” shop, where they sell game-used jerseys, broken bats, etc. We checked there, and the woman at the counter said that they didn’t have them any more (?!), but gave us the card of the guy who manages the shop, because he might still have some. I felt like I was trying to buy something off the black market. Oh, and the Authentics shop is definitely not the Rays Foundation.

Meanwhile, the latest is that a study using ground-penetrating radar was released last week, and showed that there are still graves with bodies in them in a cemetery that was paved over by the Tropicana Field parking lot, some of the bodies as close to the surface as three feet, which means there were probably some SUVs parking there where the tires were closer to a dead body that to the roof.

The whole bizarre saga reminds me of something that the satirical “news” website Fark would give a headline starting “Florida man...”

Meanwhile, of course, the Rays are again searching for a new stadium, and perhaps a new city. The effects of Hurricane Milton haven’t finished playing out.

The game       

              Kerry and I disagreed about how to describe the feel of the game. She thought it felt minor league, with the small stadium and limited concessions. While granting those aspects, I felt like I’d been to a major league game. The quality of play was definitely major league (and major league regular season, not Spring Training), the between-inning entertainment was more like a major league park than a minor league park, and it was nearly a full house, so it had a nice feel to it.

              The pitching was uniformly excellent, but the Kansas City Royals had scratched out enough runs to have a 3-1 lead going into the bottom of the 9^th inning. With one out and a runner on base in the bottom of the 9^th inning, the Rays’ Dan Jansen hit a long fly ball to deep left field that brought the whole crowd to their feet … and was caught just short of the fence. The next batter went quietly, so the Royals won. I like a dramatic ending.