About
Trop! In the Name of Love offers Rays fans, baseball fans, and others a platform to share their stories about Tropicana Field.
Originally known as the Florida Suncoast Dome and briefly the ThunderDome, Tropicana Field has been a part of St. Petersburg since 1990. And the Tampa Bay Rays have called the “Trop” home since the team's inaugural season in 1998.
Despite persistent speculations throughout the team's history about a new ballpark and potentially a move out of Tampa Bay, the Rays continued playing at the Trop well into the first quarter of the century. Then in September 2023, the Rays revealed plans to build a new ballpark in St. Pete, set to open in 2028. These plans provided the Trop with a clear expiration date, though it was not expected to come for a few more years.
Nobody could have foreseen that natural disaster would strike just a year after the Rays announced their new ballpark. In the fall of 2024, back-to-back hurricanes hit the Tampa Bay area and other parts of Florida. Hurricane Helene struck first in late September, and Tampa Bay was still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene when the even more powerful Hurricane Milton made landfall less than two weeks later. Even though Tampa Bay managed to dodge the worst forecasts and a direct hit, Hurricane Milton nevertheless brought widespread flooding and destructive winds. The Trop’s roof was completely destroyed, and many other parts of the stadium were left in ruins.
The damage to the Trop leaves the Rays without their home for the 2025 season, though they worked out an arrangement to remain in the Tampa Bay area and play at Steinbrenner Field, the New York Yankees’ spring training facility. However, that is just a short-term solution, and it is unclear what will happen to the Trop. The $56 million cost of repairs, combined with the Rays’ new stadium contract being in jeopardy with Pinellas County officials, cast further doubt on the Trop’s likelihood of being rebuilt.
While the future of the Trop is unknown, one thing is for sure: “America’s Ballpark” has hosted countless special Rays games and memories in its nearly three decades of existence. And our goal is to preserve those memories, long after the final out has been recorded at the Trop.
Note: This section will continuously be updated as more developments emerge about plans for the Trop’s rebuild and the state of the Rays’ stadium deal.
Meet the Project’s Founder
Sandy has lived in New York City, home to two storied baseball franchises, her entire life. And yet, she spent the majority of her life without being a baseball fan. One fateful night on October 24, 2020, she happened to stumble onto Game 4 of the 2020 World Series on television. She has loved baseball and the Tampa Bay Rays ever since. To this day, Brett Phillips’ walk-off hit remains the most incredible moment she’s ever seen on live sports. (And yes, it still bothers her that the Rays failed to win the World Series that year.)
Since 2023, Sandy has made it a yearly tradition to travel to see the Rays play for her birthday. Some of her fondest baseball memories are of her inaugural Rays birthday trip, which brought her to the Trop for the first time. She took her second (and hopefully not last) trip to the Trop a week before Hurricane Helene struck Florida in September 2024. Though she doesn’t live in the area, she feels most at home as a Rays fan at the Trop, and she will always treasure the time she spent there. She started Trop! In the Name of Love to pay homage to the Trop and give Rays fans an outlet to share their stories.
Sandy still resides in New York City and regularly attends baseball games at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium. She especially enjoys standing out as “a speck of Columbia blue in a sea of pinstripes” at Yankee Stadium when the Rays are in town to play the Yankees. You can follow her on Instagram at @sandyandtherays, where she posts about her many Rays and baseball adventures.