Inside the Tampa Bay Rays’ rush to transform a spring training field to an MLB ballpark

TAMPA, Fla. — It’s a race against the clock for the Tampa Bay Rays as they prepare to open their doors to fans at their temporary new home this Major League Baseball season.

With the Rays’ opening day game Friday, the team is working tirelessly to remove any signs of the New York Yankees, the original tenant of Steinbrenner Field. From covering up logos to swapping the nameplates of players like Aaron Judge and Anthony Volpe to Taj Bradley and Shane McClanahan in the clubhouse, to reorganizing the merchandise shops — it’s all part of the effort to make the Tampa Bay Rays players and fans feel at home this season.

“We have over 3,000 unique pieces of art that will be going up … a total makeover of the clubhouse to turn that into kind of the home of the Rays,” said Bill Walsh, chief business officer for the Tampa Bay Rays. “So just an extraordinary effort going in this week.”

Now visible from outside the stadium is a massive “Rays Up” banner with “Thank you, Yankees!” written in smaller text underneath. The iconic sign spelling Y-A-N-K-E-E-S in navy-and-white letters across both baselines, a staple in this ballpark since its opening in 1996, is now covered with Rays logos in a slightly different shade of blue.

Even the hanging “NY” logo in the locker room has been covered by a square “Home of the Rays” banner. But every part of the Rays’ makeover is just temporary. Per their agreement with the Yankees, the Rays will return Steinbrenner Field exactly as it was at the end of this season.

Walsh says there’s more than just rebranding behind his team’s effort to get the job done.

“Having home field advantage is such an important thing in all sports, but in baseball especially,” he said. “I mean, we’re gonna play 81 games here. That is an enormous number of games. It is a grind for our players, for their families, for our staff. And an important part of mitigating that is having this place feel comfortable.”

The Tampa Bay Rays announced in November that they would play their 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field following the devastation from Hurricane Milton at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. In a statement, Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said, “The hurricane damage to Tropicana Field has forced us to take some extraordinary steps, just as Hurricanes Helene and Milton have forced thousands of families and businesses in our community to adapt to new circumstances as we all recover and rebuild.”

Kat Lucas, the director of game presentation with the Rays, has been working for the team since 2017 and saw the post-hurricane destruction firsthand.

“Just being torn to pieces and just shredded like that, it was pretty unimaginable,” she said.

No one inside the ballpark was injured during the storm, but the damage was deemed too great to be fixed by the spring.

Reflecting on the storm six months later, Walsh called it “shocking.”

“I was very emotional that night. And then the days after, I think, like most of us, it seemed overwhelming. On top of that, personally, I was very lucky, but so many of our staff also were dealing with really significant issues on the personal side, whether that be flooding or damage to their homes. And so it was a huge organizational challenge.”

The Rays looked elsewhere for a temporary home and ended up 22 miles away, across the bay in Tampa.

Now, Lucas is looking forward to the new possibilities and challenges of working in an outdoor ballpark.

“Being inside of a dome, we were a little limited on what we could do, like fireworks, a flyover, something that you become accustomed to at large stadiums,” she said. “And this season, we get to bring that to our fans.”

And for the first time, Rays players and fans will have to adjust to Florida’s brutal summer temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns.

“Inside Tropicana Field, it was always 72 degrees,” Lucas said. “I always knew what to expect, and … I’m actually looking at the forecast ahead of time, and being like, ‘All right, do I have to plan for a weather delay?’ … So this is a new adventure for all of us.”

Another curveball: Tropicana Field could seat roughly 45,000 fans compared to Steinbrenner Field’s 10,000 seats.

“It’s a significant revenue challenge,” Walsh said. “We have the same payroll on the field, and we have to find those revenues from somewhere. … [Only having] 10,000 seats in this venue … that creates a real revenue ceiling for us.”

But despite these concerns on Tuesday, the Rays announced Friday’s 2025 regular season home opener is already sold out.

With just hours to go until that first pitch, the Rays’ director of equipment and clubhouse operations, Tyler Wall, is confident they’ll make the deadline.

“Oh, we’ll be ready. I got the utmost confidence in my entire crew here and the entire organization,” he said. “You guys will see different departments running around all day long, and it’s a culmination of everybody working together to be ready on Friday.”