Enjoy the view. It’s only temporary.
As players are adjusting to their new baseball environments this season, fans, too, are still looking for their comfort zone away from their teams’ home stadiums. The good news is, for the Rays, they are projected next season to be back in their familiar soundings of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. As for the Athletics, the American League club will be renters of Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, California, through the 2027 season.
For fans, players, and the many people who are game day workers, routines have been interrupted. Perhaps one of the best remedies to offer is to review similar situations baseball has confronted for decades.
When the Brooklyn Dodgers uprooted after the 1957 season from cozy Ebbets Field in New York’s then-most populated borough for a future in Los Angeles, the club well planned their move. Before the club’s California digs at what is now Vin Scully Avenue in Chavez Ravine would be ready to welcome in the 1962 season, owner Walter O‘Malley set up shop in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Four seasons acquainting themselves with a new fan base in a stadium that has hosted three Summer Olympics and countless football games was a hill that the Dodgers climbed well. Before the first pitch was hurled at Dodger Stadium on April 10, 1962, having O’Malley’s boys win a World Series in 1959 helped ease any anxiety all parties concerned may have had in being baseball nomads.
The New York Giants were right behind their National League and New York baseball cousins after the 1957 season, as they decided to pack up their belongings in the Polo Grounds to head west. Imagine the angst baseball fans in New York City experienced when two of the three big league clubs they grew up with changed addresses at the same time. After 61 years calling the Polo Grounds home in Manhattan, owner Horace Stoneham accepted a deal too lucrative to pass on in San Francisco.
However, as with the Dodgers being in limbo in waiting for their official stadium to be ready to move into, the Giants had their own rental agreement intact until Candlestick Park was completed in 1960. When the moving trucks made their way to Northern California, the Giants set up shop for the next two seasons in Seals Stadium. Starting out on the West Coast with a minor league ballpark as their home wasn’t ideal for the Giants, but, at least temporarily, it was the best situation available.
The Rays are also making the best of their situation this season in playing in a minor league ballpark 20 miles from St. Petersburg. Last October, when Hurricane Milton, a Category 3 storm that packed 120 mph winds, came across Tampa Bay, Tropicana Field was among the casualties. The fiberglass roof was blown off the stadium. With assessments completed, it is projected that Tropicana Field can be ready to move back into next season. Until then, it’s temporary baseball housing for the 2020 American League champions.
For now, the New York Yankees are renting their spring training home in Tampa, George M. Steinbrenner Field, to the Rays. A seating capacity of 11,026 is a financial challenge, among many for Tampa Bay this season, but there really aren’t any other options in the region. Making the best of the challenging situation is being addressed by ownership, but (fingers crossed) the Rays will be back home in 2026.
As for the Athletics, plans are to remain in West Sacramento for three seasons, or until their new home in Las Vegas is completed. Sutter Health Park, with a seating capacity of 14,014, is a slight improvement over how many fans the Rays can potentially draw at Steinbrenner Field, but by MLB standards, not ideal. The Athletics are on schedule to break ground in June for the $1.75 billion, 33,000-person ballpark. Until then, the Athletics are sharing the same field as the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats.
One of the most memorable stadium shares over the past 50 years involved the New York Yankees and New York Mets. When the last game of the 1973 season was played, the Yankees were homeless. Renovations to Yankee Stadium were scheduled to take two years. Before the Bronx Bombers could return to their iconic stadium on 161 Street and River Avenue, the club would have to endure two seasons renting Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens. The crowds were small during the 1974 and 1975 seasons for the Yankees. Even with the acquisition of free agent Jim “Catfish” Hunter and Bobby Bonds, Yankee fans using public transportation to spend a day in the Mets’ ballpark was hard to swallow.
“Well, it was different—that’s for sure,” former Yankee infielder Otto Velez told The Epoch Times in a phone conversation from his Florida home on Thursday. “We had to prepare ourselves in spring training for playing in Flushing. When we [Yankees] played in Queens, I shared an apartment with Sandy Alomar that we rented from my aunt.”
Velez, 74, says he is still watching baseball on TV (mainly Yankee games), and holds dear many memories of his parts of four seasons in pinstripes. Of the 23 games he suited up for in September 1973, Velez took pride in playing in the final game on September 30 at the “original” Yankee Stadium.
“Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle played on that very field. For me, it was a blessing to get called up when I did,” he said.
For Rays and Athletic fans, this season and beyond will progress as all seasons have, filled with highlights and plays that will keep fans talking about them well into the off-season. The game and all that is connected to MLB moves on at a schedule that seems fit. All emotional wounds will heal come next spring.
