The Rays turn Steinbrenner Field into their home for 2025 and Tampa gets a chance to host them. It will be an interesting and hopefully winning one outside.
Tampa Bay Rays’ Josh Lowe runs on his RBI double during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
TAMPA. Fla. (AP) — Today the Rays and the Rockies open the 2025 regular season outdoors and in Steinbrenner Field the new one season home of the Rays, More than 3,000 unique signs and advertising boards have been installed. The 10-by-9 foot “Y-A-N-K-E-E-S” letters above the first- and third-base stands will have been covered with Rays markings, along with the interlocking “NY” hanging from the ceiling in the center of the clubhouse. The team store will have been emptied of pinstriped gear and restocked with Rays apparel.
A metamorphosis that even Statcast can’t measure.
“Building the plane while you fly it,” said Bill Walsh, the Rays’ chief business officer. “At times really, really exciting and at times obviously just incredibly frantic and stressful.”
Concluding the ballpark couldn’t be repaired quickly, Tampa Bay found an office site near the Trop two weeks later and announced a deal on Nov. 14 to play 2025 home games at Steinbrenner Field, the open-air 11,026-capacity spring training base of the Yankees across the bay in Tampa. The site of any postseason homes games remains uncertain.
These temporary digs will feel like a player palace. A two-year renovation designed by Gensler and executed by Turner Construction Co. transformed the home clubhouse from motel quality to a Four Seasons.
A home clubhouse more lavish than most regular season facilities
Player and staff space doubled to 50,000 square feet. There is a two-story weight room with floor-to-ceiling windows and garage door, indoor and outdoor stretching areas, a Ping-Pong table, a barbershop, eight beds in a trainers area, massage rooms and a SwimEx along with hot and cold tubs with TVs at water level, a sauna red-light therapy and four batting cages. Each player locker has a safe along with USB and USB-C ports. There is a 70-seat meeting room, six private offices and 12 desks for additional staff.
A made-to-order open kitchen is near a 2,400-square foot picnic patio with 18 tables for dining and a long counter.
“I could totally see a wedding,” said Matt Ferry, the Yankees’ director of baseball operations.
Andy Pettitte, a former Yankees ace and now a spring training instructor, recalled how the food table was in a clubhouse corner near the showers when the stadium opened in 1996.
“It’s crazy it’s so beautiful,” Pettitte said after a dip in the cold tank. “When I came up, it was taboo to be in the trainers room.”
Steinbrenner Field’s regular-season team is the Yankees’ Class A Tampa Tarpons, who will dress a 1.2-mile drive away at the team’s minor league complex across Dale Mabry Highway and play home games on field two, a practice diamond behind Steinbrenner’s first-base side.
New York spent the last two offseasons renovating the home clubhouse.
“The industry owes Hal Steinbrenner a real debt of gratitude,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said of the Yankees owner. “He put literally tens of millions of dollars into improving Steinbrenner Field and the first people who are really going to get to use it for any period of time is the Tampa Bay Rays.”
Some reminders of Yankees will remain
George Steinbrenner’s statue and the retired numbers commemorating Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other Yankees greats near the entrance must remain untouched along with the late owner’s name above the videoboard.
All the other signage is set to change — the new ones would stretch a mile laid side to side. Five companies, 50 installers and at least 80 Rays staff will carry out the conversion.
A method will be found to cover the floor tiles leading to the clubhouse bathrooms that spell out: “The Bronx” and “New York.” It was unclear whether the Rays can cover wallpaper near the showers meant to create the illusion of scenery viewed from a speeding subway. While the clubhouse is set up for spring training with 51 stalls along the walls circling the room and 28 in the center spread into four pods, the Rays thought it might be too difficult to remove the unneeded spaces in the middle.
“We didn’t do as much branding as we wanted to do because the Rays are going to cover most of it,” Ferry said.
Yankees staff will remain in their fourth-floor offices, but the team will use the cramped visitors’ clubhouse on the third-base side when the Rays host New York from April 17-20 and Aug. 19-20. Extra construction is being funded by the Rays.
What had been the visitors trainers room was opened to the main part of the locker room and in the equivalent of musical chairs, the training tables moved to the baseball storage area. The umpires room became the manager’s office, which was remade into the clubhouse manager’s space, and umpires were moved to a trailer outside the ballpark. Max’s Cafe, which had been used for media meals, will be the visiting team’s food area.
A security room became the video review room and a humidor for baseballs was constructed off the tunnel circling between the dugouts. Tracking and replay technology was installed.
Seat inventory will change from Ticketmaster to Tickets.com but luxury suites will remain at the current 13. Food will be provided by Legends Hospitality, co-owned by the Yankees’ parent company, instead of Levy Restaurants, Tropicana Field’s concessionaire since 2018.
“We absolutely have kind of day by day, in some cases kind of hour by hour schedules for various installations,” said Walsh, who learned from the experience of shifting the team’s 2023 spring training site after damage in Port Charlotte caused by Hurricane Ian.
Storms are likely in the summer
Absence of a roof figures to be disruptive in an area that had a record 80.29 inches of rain last year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including 82% from June 1 through Oct. 15. The Tarpons had eight games delayed by rain either pregame or in-game plus four cancellations, three postponements, four suspended games and one that was shortened.
“We’re going to be playing outdoor baseball in Tampa Bay for the first time ever during the regular season and people have been talking about this for decades,” Walsh said. “It’s kind of in our DNA to be a bit of an agitator and try to find opportunity sort of through challenges and through doing things differently. And this is certainly doing things differently.”
The Commissioner of Major League Baseball’s legal team has not yet engaged in serious collective bargaining negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association as the present CBA ending in December 2026. The rest of the 2025 season and the 2026 season will not be impacted by labor strife but there is something unusual going on with the owners side. Owners are speaking out about the need for some mechanism to control players’ salaries. In past negotiations the owners generally said nothing leaving it up to the commissioner’s legal team to do the bargaining and make statements. The owner of the Houston Astros franchise, Jim Crane, is the latest owner to discuss the upcoming CBA talks and while he is not pushing for a salary cap, Crane thinks something needs to be done. Crane said he does not “think a salary cap happens” even though there is “glaring need for MLB to change its economic structure to fit more in line with that of the NFL, NHL or NBA.”
Crane’s comments follow those of the owner of the Colorado Rockies’ franchise Dick Monfort who joined the chorus led by Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein and New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner that want something done. And they want something done by the beginning of the 2027 season. There seems to be a concentrated effort from Major League Baseball’s ownership side that the business must rein in spending by the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership. There seems to be three camps here in what has become the first volleys fired in negotiations between the owners and players. The owners are annoyed at the Dodgers ownership, so there is not a united ownership message, it’s the Dodgers owners against the other 29 owners and then the owners versus the players. MLB owners may be laying the ground for a lockout.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Kenley Jansen (74) reacts after closing out the Tampa Bay Rays during the ninth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 8, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Luis Rengifo hit a tiebreaking single in the ninth inning and the Los Angeles Angels rallied to beat Tampa Bay 4-3 Tuesday night, extending the Rays’ losing streak to five in the opener of a 13-game homestand.
Kenley Jansen allowed singles to Jake Mangum and Taylor Walls starting the ninth but escaped a second-and-third, no-outs jam for his third save. Yandy Díaz grounded to Rengifo, who threw out Mangum at the plate from third, and Jansen struck out Brandon Lowe and José Caballero to seal the Angels’ third straight win.
Tampa Bay drew 10,046 in its seventh sellout at Steinbrenner Field but dropped to 4-3 at its temporary home, the Yankees spring training ballpark.
This series originally was scheduled for Anaheim but Major League Baseball rearranged the schedule to have the Rays play 19 of their first 22 games at home in an attempt to lessen the impact of summer storms at the open-air ballpark. The Rays’ usual home, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, has a dome that was damaged by Hurricane Milton last October.
The Rays went 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position and stranded nine runners, including seven in the last three innings. Pete Fairbanks (1-1) was the loser.
Tampa Bay’s Kameron Misner was hit on the helmet by a 98.8 mph pitch from Brock Burke (2-0) in the eighth but stayed in the game.
Anaheim’s Kyren Paris hit his third homer this seasons, a two-run drive off Shane Baz, with a video review upholding there was no fan interference.
Junior Caminero’s homer off Ben Joyce started a three-run seventh that overcame a 2-0 deficit. Christopher Morel hit a tying double and scored on Misner’s triple.
Travis d’Arnaud hit a tying RBI grounder in the eighth.
Key moment
Morel was ejected by plate umpire Rob Drake after a called strike in the eighth. He had words with the umpire and slammed his bat.
Key stat
Jansen went 0 for 4, grounding into a double play, and is 1 for 24 in his first season with Tampa Bay.
Up next
Angels LHP Yusei Kikuchi (0-1, 4.50 ERA) and Rays RHP starter Ryan Pepiot (0-1) Wednesday.
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The final buzzer in San Antonio closed a drama that ended with confetti and Gator chomps — a thrill-a-minute NCAA title for the Florida Gators that reminded us all of what’s so good about the games these college athletes play.
In another court — a few hours earlier and 1,700 miles away — lawyers, a few athletes and a judge debated issues that will impact the future of games like these and what comes next for a multibillion-dollar college-sports industry that is struggling with change.
Those two scenes Monday illustrated all that’s at stake, and maybe even whether March Madness, which Florida wrapped up with a 65-63 title-clinching victory over Houston, will look the same in coming years.
So while Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr.’s clutch stop in the final seconds might have produced the day’s biggest headline, federal judge Claudia Wilken’s decision about the multibillion-dollar college-sports lawsuit settlement — which could come within days, weeks, months, who knows? — will carry more weight.
“Basically I think it is a good settlement, don’t quote me, and I think it’s worth pursuing,” Wilken said near the close of the daylong hearing she held in Oakland that finished about an hour before tipoff in the Alamodome. “I think some of these things could be fixed if people tried to fix them and that it would be worth their while to try to fix them.”
Judge seeks solutions for roster limits, future college players
Among Wilken’s top-line items is figuring a way to gradually implement roster limits prescribed by the lawsuit. A solution could prevent an immediate wholesale phase-out of hundreds of football players, swimmers, sprinters and other college athletes across the country.
She also wants tweaks to how athletes who haven’t yet reached college might be treated per terms of an agreement that’s supposed to last 10 years.
“We’re taking your feedback. We’ll take it to our clients,” NCAA attorney Rakesh Kilaru told Wilken.
The clock is ticking.
As currently structured, terms of the settlement are due to take effect on July 1, when the biggest change will be schools’ ability to pay athletes directly. Also at stake is $2.78 billion in backpay to former players who weren’t eligible for those payments.
Putting settlement’s terms in play will impact all sports
That’s where it comes back to the Gators, along with the thousands of varsity teams and players participating in college sports — from swimmers to pitchers to quarterbacks and everyone in between.
Like every other coach, Florida’s Todd Golden is learning to work with a payroll. It’s funded both from third-party booster groups that can funnel money to the players, and then, if Wilken gives the OK, from a pool of $20.5 million that schools like his will distribute among all its athletes — but mostly to football and a little less to basketball.
Those financial decisions, in turn, will dictate roster decisions and determine whether the Gators can afford another player like Clayton.
He’s the senior who left a small northeastern school, Iona, to come back to his home state and join Golden and the Gators. He scored 134 points in six tournament games that culminated with Monday’s final. He will be playing in the NBA next year.
Houston frustrated him and held him to 11 points in his final game as a collegian. But Clayton got the last laugh when he charged toward Cougars guard Emanuel Sharp, who was lining up for what could have been the game-winning 3-pointer with the clock ticking down in a tense, rugged, defense-focused game that left everyone on edge.
Clayton’s defense forced Sharp to let the ball go without shooting. It bounced once, then twice, then a third time — Sharp couldn’t grab it, lest he be called for traveling — before Clayton’s Florida teammate Alex Condon pounced on it and the buzzer sounded.
“I do think what separates us and has separated us all season long is our team talent, how our guys have played together and for each other all year,” Golden said. “Because of that, we can call each other national champions for the rest of our lives.”
While the Gators got ready to cut down the nets, the well-worn favorite, “One Shining Moment” — a treacly highlight reel from America’s three-week hoops extravaganza — played on the big screen above.
Florida sprinted and Houston trudged through the tunnel, into their locker rooms, and basketball — and college sports, in general — began the long wait to see what comes next.
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