The future of the Tampa Bay Rays is currently in limbo, but they may have found a temporary home for the 2025 Major League Baseball season.

Tropicana Field, the domed home of the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League, was severely damaged by Hurricane Milton last month. The damage to the roof was so severe that the city of St. Petersburg announced it wouldn’t be fixed in time for the 2025 season.

The repair bill is expected to be close to $56 million, however, with the fact that the Rays and the city had an agreement to build a new $1.3 billion stadium that is scheduled to open in 2028, has slowed the movement on giving the go ahead to repair Tropicana Field.

Adding to the contentious relationship between the city of St. Petersburg and the Rays is the announcement made last week that the team would play their games in 2025 at George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the New York Yankees spring training facility. This has upset the city counselors and Pinellas County commissioners. They feel the Rays are disrespecting their fan base and taking tax dollars out of a county that promised to build them a new stadium.

Now, that stadium deal is in jeopardy, as the Tampa Bay Times reported this week.

In the hurricane’s wake, October bond votes scheduled by the City Council ($287.5 million) and County Commission ($312.5 million) were postponed for a month. The timeline was already tight for a planned groundbreaking in early 2025, and the bond votes were supposed to go hand-in-hand with requirements the Rays have been working toward.

The team needed to have its $700 million financing plan in place, secure a $100 million loan from Major League Baseball and have 50% of the design documents completed, among other things. It was a cascading series of benchmarks with virtually no wiggle room.

The issue was exacerbated when the delays took the council and commission beyond the Nov. 5 election that altered the makeup of both entities. Now, it’s not simply a delay on bonds but a reexamination of the deal itself, led by commissioners Chris Latvala and Dave Eggers. What was once a 5-2 vote in favor of the redevelopment project by the commission is now potentially a 4-3 vote against it.

This means that some of the politicians who were in favor of the new stadium and renovation deal have been voted out of office, while others who have campaigned against the deal with the baseball team, have now been elected to office. So, not only might the Rays not get a new ballpark, but the local leaders may not approve the money needed to repair Tropicana Field and ultimately, that may force the team to relocate permanently.

If the St. Petersburg City Council decides to not pay for repair costs beyond their $25M insurance policy, the Rays would become free to consider the possibility of relocating.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said, “Last month, the County Commission upended our ballpark agreement by not approving their bonds, as they promised to do. That action sent a clear message that we had lost the county as a partner. The future of baseball in Tampa Bay became less certain after that vote.”

Already, that possibility is being explored and the usual cities with interest that have been mentioned in the past include Montreal, Nashville, Portland and Charlotte.

For the time being, Steinbrenner Field won’t be without its challenges. It’s an open-air stadium, and with the daily ran showers and humid conditions in the summer months, it will pose some challenges for the team and its fans. The 11,026-seat capacity is small in comparison to other MLB ballparks, but the Rays have typically not been drawing well for years, so they should at least be able to fill that stadium on a regular basis.

We’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds for the Rays beyond 2025.

TULSA BEACON RADIO

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