- March 29, 2025
-
-
Loading
Loading
Two days before the 2025 baseball season officially began, crews for the Tampa Bay Rays were at George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa working to get the stadium ready for Opening Day March 28.
In one way, it was not unlike what was happening at ballparks across the league Wednesday as teams transitioned from Spring Training to the regular season.
But in many other ways it is unprecedented.
The Tampa Bay Rays were moving into the Spring Training home of the rival New York Yankees for the 2025 season after the team’s longtime home, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, was heavily damaged last year during Hurricane Milton.
“There's no playbook for this. I've compared it to building a plane while you fly it, which I think is pretty good analogy here,” says Bill Walsh, the team’s chief business officer.
“We really had to invent things as we went along. There was no way at the beginning of this process we would have been able to predict all of the different decisions that we would have to make.”
The move, which did not begin until the Sunday before Opening Day, is a massive undertaking as the Rays take over the ballpark belonging to the Yankees and put its own mark on the place. That means new signage all around the interior and exterior of the ballpark, with Rays logos and colors replacing Yankees branding.
The team shops, days before the first game, were process of being taken by Rays’ hats, T-shirts and other items. On the outfield walls, it was the Rays’ sponsors who appeared on the space.
In all, the team says more than 3,000 individual pieces of marketing assets would be installed at the ballpark.
And it’s not just where the fans are. The home team locker room has been completely remade into the place where Rays’ players will spend the majority of the next six months, longer if they play well.
Team logos and equipment has replaced the Yankees logos.
“As soon as the guys get here, we want them to feel like home,” says Tyler Wall, the Rays’ director of major league equipment and clubhouse operations.
There are also operational and technical changes that were being made as well adjustments to giveaways and in-game promotions. The Rays, for the first time, have added fireworks, with displays coming after the national anthem, home runs and victories.
The team also upgraded broadcast cabling, expanded the visiting team’s clubhouse and upgraded WiFi connectivity.
All of the work has been a logistical juggling act that has been planned for months but with work only starting several days before the official first pitch of the 2025 season was thrown.
Walsh says the organization was able to come to Steinbrenner Field during Spring Training to catalog what needed to be done and prepare. “But we weren't actually able to get in here until Sunday night.”
“That was really the biggest challenge of this. We really had to be highly organized and be able to kind of get in here and hit go Sunday night.”
The Rays say 50 installers from five companies and more than 80 staff members worked around the clock since Sunday evening with seven trucks transporting the player's items and the team’s equipment from Tropicana Field and the Rays’ Spring Training facility in Port Charlotte.
And even with all the planning, which began shortly after the move was announced in November and includes a 400-page book with a master plan, there were surprises.
The team realized a few days after starting the transformation that there wasn’t a video feed from the bullpen going to the press box, which is crucial to the game broadcast.
Walsh says it’s those behind-the-scenes, operational, support infrastructure sort of issues that have been the most challenging. And while the Rays’ are no strangers to changes and most of the tasks undertaken at Steinbrenner Field have been done elsewhere at one time or another, the short amount of time and the amount of work needed to be done created a crunch.
A crunch that can be overcome.
“Everybody scrambles. We work together, we figure out how to get it done,” says Walsh.
The Rays’ put the changes at Steinbrenner Field on display at an event March 26 and the team said then that while the timing is tight, it was on track for Opening Day Friday.
Crews were working during the event, stacking equipment, setting up the gift shops, unpacking boxes and putting the finishes touches on the ballpark and clubhouse. On team staffer greeted a caller with “Happy opening week.”
There were a couple of players milling about though most would see the clubhouse for the first time that afternoon.
All that was missing was a game on the field.
But it is important to note that Opening Day and the start of the season are just a respite from the serious questions remaining about the Ray’s future.
For one, the team is paying $15 million for the use of Steinbrenner Field and have poured an undisclosed amount of money into personalizing it. That’s coupled with the fact that the stadium only fits about 10,000 spectators — nearly 75% less than the 42,735 seats at Tropicana Field.
While a smaller and newer outdoor ballpark could do wonders for the fan experience, it is going to put a serious dent into the team’s revenue stream.
That will happen as team officials decide what to do about a new stadium after the $1.3 billion deal for the previous one fell apart earlier this month and while it remains unclear when the team will be able to get back into Tropicana Field.
This as questions linger about who will even own the Rays as the current ownership is under outside pressure to sell the team.
But as Opening Day approached, the focus was on the season ahead, a time every baseball fan and player sees as hopeful.
And Opening Days doesn't mean the work is done for Ray’s staffers, says Warren Hypes, the team’s vice president of creative and brand.
“We get to Friday and then we have 22 games in the next 19 days or whatever it is.”
And then there are another 59 home games after that.
As for Opening Day March 28. The Rays beat the Colorado Rockies 3-2 in front of a sold out crowd of 10,046.
