ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Somewhere, palm fronds are swaying. Seagulls are squawking, the sun is blinding and the familiar scent of Coppertone is wafting through the bleachers.
Just not inside Tropicana Field, where spring training has sacrificed charm for necessity.
The Rays introduced the world to Grapefruit League Concentrate on Thursday, playing the first of 13 spring games indoors due to hurricane damage at their ballpark in Port Charlotte. It wasn’t the organic version of spring, but it was comfortable, convenient and, most of all, practical considering the short amount of time they had to pull it off.
“This is unnatural,” Rays president Matt Silverman said. “This building was not designed for spring training baseball. The reason spring training is in Florida is because of our weather. You want to be outdoors. This is the perfect time of the year for these afternoon baseball games, and this dome was not built for that.”
Maybe that’s why the debut crowd was a smallish 2,531 to see the Twins come from behind in the ninth inning for a 4-2 victory. The crowd was so quiet and subdued, umpires told Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli that they — along with hitters — could hear what pitches were coming through the catcher’s PitchCom earpiece.
Tickets were relatively cheap (mostly in the $10-$20 range), seating was ample and the AC was humming, but it’s not the same thing as watching sailboats floating beyond the left-field wall at the old Al Lang Stadium.
Still, it was a pretty remarkable achievement considering how uncertain the team’s spring plans were just a few months ago. The Rays needed facilities to accommodate 80-plus players for spring workouts, a stadium for more than a dozen games, extended spring training for 150 or so minor league players, and all of it needed to fit within the framework of the schedule already produced by Major League Baseball.
That meant head groundskeeper Dan Moeller had to get the facilities at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex up to MLB standards, and also had to revamp the historic grounds at Huggins-Stengel Field in St. Petersburg so morning workouts can be held there on days when the Trop is hosting a game.
The entire sod infield at Huggins-Stengel was replaced, more than 60 tons of clay were removed to lower the field to a natural level, bullpens were revamped and batting cages were installed down the leftfield line. And all of it had to be done while the field was also being used for St. Petersburgh High baseball games and other sporting events.
“One of our vice presidents texted me a picture one day of her son playing in some flag football league in rightfield and I was like, ‘What …?’ ” Moeller said. “There’s been a few challenges along the way, but St. Pete High has been really, really good. They’ve been picking our brains on how to maintain a field, and the city of St. Pete has been good about being very accommodating to anything we’ve asked for.”
The fields were just one challenge. Tyler Wall, the team’s clubhouse and equipment manager, had the lone game at Disney against the Yankees, a road game in North Port, and the move to Tropicana in less than 72 hours. His staff worked from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Tuesday, were back at work by 7 a.m. on Wednesday and had two different clubhouses outfitted by Thursday morning.
“Think about it this way,” Wall said. “We had to move 80 lockers from Orlando to here; gloves, shoes, everything individually marked in their lockers. On top of that, we’ve got bats, we’ve got helmets, we’ve got medical supplies, the entire training room. The entire equipment room. The entire bat boy room. It’s quite the operation.”
And yet, by Thursday morning, it had all come together. While preparations were underway for the game at Tropicana, manager Kevin Cash and his staff were at Huggins-Stengel where a half-dozen pitchers threw live batting practice to hitters on a century-old field used by high schoolers.
The fence at Huggins-Stengel is 430 feet down the right-field line so when Brandon Lowe hit a rocket off Ryan Thompson, he stood and watched in amazement as it one-hopped the wall. Lowe playfully tossed his bat in the air while teammates howled.
“I love it here; I think it’s awesome,” Thompson said later. “We’ve all been talking about it. It reminds us of Little League … it reminds us of American Legion. Just seeing the (dog) park in the background, the people walking around, this is the childhood game we all fell in love with.”
The hassle factor is fairly high, but no one seemed to be complaining. There might even be some residual benefit with younger players getting accustomed to Tropicana Field before the regular season, and players sleeping in their own beds during the rest of spring training.
“It’s different. The Huggins-Stengel experience is a bit of a throwback. Playing spring training games indoors at the Trop. It’s all different,” said Erik Neander, president of baseball operations. “Maybe playing more games indoors will help us stay fresh, I don’t know. Time will tell how this all works. I will say, everybody is understanding of the reasons we’re in this situation. They get that, and we all appreciate that perspective.
“Different doesn’t mean good or bad, it just means different. And so far, collectively to this point, we’ve been able to find the good in our circumstances.”
