Tropicana Field
Tropicana Field is a domed multipurpose stadium located in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. "The Trop" is the home of the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball. The stadium is also used for college football, and from December 2008 to December 2017 was the home of the St. Petersburg Bowl, an annual postseason bowl game. The venue is the only nonretractable domed stadium in the MLB. Tropicana Field is the smallest MLB stadium by seating capacity when obstructed-view rows in the uppermost sections are covered with tarps as they are for most Rays games.
Tropicana Field opened in 1990 and was originally known as the Florida Suncoast Dome. In 1993, the Tampa Bay Lightning moved to the facility and its name was changed to the ThunderDome until the team moved to its new home in downtown Tampa in 1996. In October 1996, Tropicana Products, a fruit juice company then based in nearby Bradenton, signed a 30-year naming rights deal.
Tropicana Field's location and design have been widely criticized, and it is often cited as one of the worst stadiums in MLB, which itself has cited the need to replace Tropicana Field as one of the primary obstacles to future expansion.
In 2023, the Tampa Bay Rays announced a deal with local politicians to build Gas Plant Stadium, a new stadium near Tropicana Field at an expected cost of $1.2 billion, half of which would fall on taxpayers. In March 2025, the Rays cancelled the deal.
On October 9, 2024, much of the translucent, fiberglass roof membrane of Tropicana Field was destroyed by Hurricane Milton. Repairs on the stadium began in July 2025 and are expected to be completed by April 2026. Due to the hurricane damage, the Rays played all of their home games for the 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa and will return to Tropicana Field in 2026.
History
After Tampa was awarded the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tampa Bay Rowdies in the 1970s, St. Petersburg decided it wanted a share of the professional sports scene in the Tampa Bay area. City officials decided early on that the city would attempt to attract Major League Baseball. Possible designs for a baseball park or multipurpose stadium were proposed as early as 1983. One such design, in the same location where Tropicana Field would ultimately be built, called for an open-air stadium with a circus tent-like covering. It took several design cues from open-air Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, including fountains beyond the outfield wall.Ultimately, city officials decided that a stadium with a fixed permanent dome was necessary for a prospective MLB team to be viable in the area, due to its hot, humid summers and frequent thunderstorms. Construction began in 1986 in the hope that it would lure an MLB team to the facility.
1990s
The stadium was finished in 1990. Named the Florida Suncoast Dome, it hosted the 1990 Davis Cup Finals that autumn, and several rock concerts, but still had no tenants. The venue helped make St. Petersburg a finalist in the MLB expansion for 1993, but it lost out to Miami and Denver. Rumors arose of the Seattle Mariners moving in the early part of the 1990s, and the San Francisco Giants came close to moving to the area, with Tampa Bay investors announcing their purchase of the team and its relocation in a press conference in 1992. However, the sale and move were blocked by National League owners, who voted against the deal in November 1992 under pressure from San Francisco officials and the then-owner of the Florida Marlins, Blockbuster Video Chairman H. Wayne Huizenga. A local boycott of Blockbuster Video stores occurred for several years thereafter.The Suncoast Dome finally got a regular tenant in 1991, when the Arena Football League's Tampa Bay Storm made their debut. Two years later, the National Hockey League's Tampa Bay Lightning made the stadium their home for three seasons. In the process, the Suncoast Dome was renamed the ThunderDome. Because of the large capacity of what was basically a park built for baseball, several NHL and AFL attendance records were set during the Lightning and Storm's tenures there.
Finally, in 1995, the ThunderDome received a baseball team when MLB expanded to the Tampa Bay area. Changes were made to the stadium and its naming rights were sold to Tropicana Products, which renamed it Tropicana Field in 1996. The relocation of the Lightning and Storm into what is now Benchmark International Arena in downtown Tampa upon its completion permitted "The Trop" to be vacated for conversion to baseball. A US$70 million renovation then took place—to upgrade a stadium that had cost $130 million to complete only eight years earlier. Ebbets Field was the model for the renovations, which included a replica of the famous rotunda that greeted Dodger fans for many years. The first regular-season baseball game took place at the park on March 31, 1998, when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays faced the Detroit Tigers, losing 11-6. Luis Gonzalez of the Tigers hit the first home run at the stadium, followed by Wade Boggs hitting the first Devil Rays homer later that game. Boggs also hit a home run for his 3,000th hit at Tropicana Field in 1999. Boggs' historic home runs are commemorated with golden seats and plaques where the balls landed in the right-field seats.
Although Tropicana was purchased by PepsiCo in 1998, the company refrained from making any changes to the park’s naming rights, as the brand is popular among the local fanbase.
2000s
The park was initially built with an AstroTurf surface, but it was replaced in 2000 by softer FieldTurf. A new version of FieldTurf, FieldTurf Duo, was installed prior to the 2007 season. It has always featured a traditional "full dirt" infield, instead of the "sliding pits" design that was common during the 1970s and 1980s, making it the first artificial turf field with a full dirt infield since Busch Stadium II in 1976. Since Tropicana Field does not need to convert between baseball and football, sliding pits, designed to save reconfiguration time, were unnecessary. Tropicana has hosted football games, but never during baseball season. On August 6, 2007, the AstroTurf warning track was replaced by brown-colored, stone-filled FieldTurf Duo.Tropicana Field underwent a further $25 million facelift prior to the 2006 season. Another $10 million in improvements were added during the season. In 2006, the Devil Rays added a live cownose ray tank to Tropicana Field, located just behind the center field wall, in clear view of the play on the field. People can go up to the tank to touch the creatures. Further improvements prior to the 2007 offseason, in addition to the new FieldTurf, include additional family features in the right-field area, the creation of a new premium club, and several new video boards including a new Daktronics LED main video board that is four times larger than the original video board. The 2007 renovation also added built-in HDTV capabilities to the stadium, with Fox Sports Florida and WXPX airing at least a quarter of the schedule in HD in 2007 and accommodating the new video board's 16x9 aspect ratio.
Image:TropicanaFieldEntrance.JPG|thumb|left|Entrance rotunda façade as it appeared in 2008
On September 3, 2008, in a game between the Rays and the New York Yankees, Tropicana Field had the first official use of instant replay in the history of MLB. The disputed play involved a home run hit above the left-field foul pole by Yankee Alex Rodriguez. The ball was called a home run on the field, but was close enough that the umpires opted to view the replay to verify the call. Later, the Trop had the first case of a call being overturned by instant replay, when a fly ball by Carlos Peña originally ruled a ground-rule double due to fan interference, was overturned and made a home run on September 19. The umpires determined that the fan in question, originally believed to have reached over the right-field wall, did not do so.
In October 2008, Tropicana Field hosted its first baseball postseason games as the Rays met the Chicago White Sox in the American League Division Series, the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, and the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. It hosted the on-field trophy presentations for the Rays when they became the American League Champions on October 19, following game 7 of the ALCS. Chase Utley hit the first World Series home run at Tropicana Field during the first inning of game 1 of the 2008 World Series. The Rays ended up losing the game 3–2 and eventually the World Series to the Phillies 4 games to 1.
Since 2008, the top third of the upper-deck seating has been tarped over, artificially reducing the stadium's capacity to 36,048 for the 2008 regular season. It was further reduced to 35,041 for the 2008 postseason, since the 300-level Party Deck had been reserved by MLB as an auxiliary press area. On October 14, 2008, the Rays announced that the upper-deck tarps would be removed for the remainder of the postseason, starting with game 6 of the ALCS. This increased the capacity of the stadium to nearly 41,000, depending on standing-room-only tickets sold.
2010s
The first no-hitter pitched at Tropicana Field took place on June 25, 2010, thrown by Edwin Jackson of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had been a member of the Rays from 2006 to 2008.About one month after Jackson's no-hitter, on July 26, 2010, Tropicana Field was the site of the first no-hitter in Rays' history when pitcher Matt Garza achieved the feat. Garza faced the minimum 27 batters, as the only opponent to reach base was erased by a double play hit by the following batter.
On June 24, 2013, in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays, three Rays players – James Loney, Wil Myers, and Sam Fuld – hit consecutive home runs, a first at Tropicana Field.
Because of rioting in Baltimore, a series between the Rays and Baltimore Orioles in May 2015 was moved from Oriole Park at Camden Yards to Tropicana Field. The games were played with the Orioles serving as the home team and the Rays serving as the visiting team.
Due to severe flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area, the Houston Astros played one "home" series at Tropicana Field in August 2017 against the Texas Rangers, while the Rays were away on a previously scheduled road trip; the Rangers took two out of three games from the Astros. This was only the fourth time games were moved to a neutral location due to weather. Coincidentally, in advance of Hurricane Irma arriving in the Tampa Bay area two weeks later, the Rays' home series against the New York Yankees was moved to Citi Field, the home stadium of the Yankees' crosstown rivals, the New York Mets.
In July 2018, a proposal was unveiled to replace the facility with Ybor Stadium. Later that year at the MLB Winter Owners Meeting, though, Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg announced that the Ybor stadium plan would not go forward. The current stadium lease between the Rays and the City of St. Petersburg runs through 2027. The city granted the Rays until December 31, 2018, to continue negotiations with Hillsborough County officials. Although MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has stated his support for "the ballpark effort and desire to be in assisting all parties in finding a way to keep the Rays in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area", he also went on to say that the Rays should "explore a path that is in the best interests of his club and Major League Baseball".
In addition, the relocation announcement sparked a flurry of redevelopment proposals submitted to the City of St. Petersburg. There are proposals to eliminate the structure completely, but efforts have been made to include the public in the debate using several community meetings.
For the 2019 season, Tropicana Field closed its upper decks, as part of efforts and renovations to "create a more intimate, entertaining and appealing experience for our fans". This reduced the stadium's capacity to around 25,000–the lowest in the league. The team's average attendance in the 2018 season was only just over 14,000.