In the wake of Hurricane Milton I watched the news feeds closely to see what would happen to Tropicana Field. The fabric dome (an early form of PTFE) had a usable life expectancy of 25 years. The Trop was already 34 years old at the end of the 2024 MLB season, so it would seem that the facility was on borrowed time. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Mother Nature had its own plans for that roof.
I’ll include my thread below.
The morning after #HurricaneMilton, one of the questions is, “Where will the Rays play?” Let’s go over the options. [1/x] (video from @Ry_Bass)
[2/x] The simplest, though not cheapest, option is to build a new roof at the Trop and play there. Assuming there are no additional structural problems, this is a likely path since the Trop itself is insured. It’s like getting a crappy insurance payout after your car is totaled.
[3/x] The Rays can’t play at the Trop without a roof. Nothing under the dome was properly weatherproofed for outdoor use. In the baking heat and frequent storms of the future it would rapidly degrade. So roofless is not even a short-term solution.
[4/x] Next options are local. There are plenty of spring training facilities – basically AA/AAA quality – where the Rays could play. Their own in Port Charlotte is small and 2 hours south. The closest/largest is George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, same size as Sutter Health Park.
[5/x] As these are outdoor facilities they will be subject to weather. Everyone in MLB (players, other teams) will have issues. It’s too unpredictable to hang a schedule on. So it’s probably out except for some April games before heat really kicks in.
[6/x] Miami has a retractable roof stadium where the Marlins’ schedule should run roughly opposite the Rays’. That makes it a contingency plan in case the Rays can’t stay local. It would sacrifice any attempt at attendance. I’ve driven Alligator Alley. Miami/Tampa are not close.
[7/x] That leaves other markets outside of Florida. Nashville & Charlotte have AAA parks and desire expansion teams. Oakland has a MLB park and the A’s – who vacated it – playing 90 miles northeast. San Antonio has an old football dome with a baseball configuration. And Montreal.
[8/F] None of those markets are desirable unless they have new MLB ballparks in them. Stadia are too expensive to build on spec these days. So it’s a Catch-22, ironic since Tropicana Field (aka Florida Suncoast Dome) was built on spec. IMO it all leads back to the Trop. For now.
Another thing to consider is that MLB under Manfred is clearly separating East Coast teams like the Rays from West Coast teams like the A’s. They’re not to move between coasts as that affects divisional scheduling and travel.
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It’s worth briefly discussing how terrifyingly awesome a storm Milton was as it ravaged Florida, not just from the usual torrential rain, wind, and storm surge that comes with a hurricane, but also from a record number of tornadoes that spun up in South Florida and the Atlantic coast well away from the eye of Milton. It started in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Veracruz, thanks to the combination of extremely warm Gulf water to fuel the nascent storm and nudges from remnants of another storm from the Pacific. After Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend area and barreled north through southern Appalachia, I was curious about the path the new storm would take.
After churning as it made its way northeast, Milton took a slight southerly detour and hit landfall south of Sarasota instead of the Tampa Bay direct hit. Tampa Bay was not spared significant destruction, as shown by the damage done to the Trop’s roof.
In response, the Rays are taking an open approach to dealing with the Trop, saying that a proper damage assessment could take weeks to complete. If the facility was 4 or 14 years old instead of 34, the team would work more urgently to repair the roof and make the place playable again. The Trop is near its practical end-of-life and there is already a plan underway to replace it with a newer dome next door, so you may ask what the point is. Could the Rays and Pinellas County simply roll an insurance settlement into the next project? Presumably, yes. However, I have a feeling the depreciation is going to work against both parties, limiting the payouts to some degree. Still unknown at the moment is the extent of any flood or structural damage, so perhaps patience is in order.
Then again, there is the question of value. On Twitter yesterday I kept pointing to the Metrodome, which had a serious puncture in its inflatable roof that eventually justified a complete replacement two months after the storm damage. Replaced for $18 million, the work was done by August 2011, in time for the next Vikings season. Of course, the Vikings only played at the Hubert Horatio Humphrey Metrodome for two additional seasons as they planned their own dome successor on the same site, US Bank Stadium. The Twins already vacated for Target Field on the other side of downtown Minneapolis, and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team left for the on-campus TCF Bank (now Huntington Bank) Stadium.
That makes the question of refurbishing the Trop largely one of value. This isn’t like the post-Katrina Superdome, which had nine figures of FEMA and state aid poured into it in order to keep the Saints from moving to San Antonio. Tropicana Field should be treated like a short-term case where the facility has a clear expiration date. Will the repairs cost $30 million? $50 million? $100 million? The Rays can’t throw some tarps and FlexSeal over the dome and call it a day. This will be expensive, and yet, clearly not enough.
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P.S. – Al Lang Field, once a Spring Training venue and now the home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer club, is being discussed as a temporary home. Other than it being a really small site, I can’t see anything wrong with it other than the usual weather concerns and the ridiculous “sail-like” roofed concept from over a decade ago. I loved that silly idea, so I will take any opportunity to include it in a post.
newballpark.org 