Home of the Rays in 2025.
If you plan to attend a Tampa Bay Rays home game in 2025, you will be visiting Steinbrenner Field on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa.
As the Rays take up residence across the bay, it got us thinking about the close, century-long connection between professional baseball and the city of Tampa.
Here’s a brief history on the legend of what was once called Legends Field.
Tampa Baseball Doesn’t Start with the Yankees
Before Aki Iwamura stepped on second and sent the Rays to the World Series, Al Lopez suited up for the Tampa Smokers. Before Wilson Alvarez yanked the first pitch in Devil Rays history, Babe Ruth launched what is considered his longest homerun ever. And well before Parnell Dickinson completed the first touchdown pass for the inept inaugural Tampa Bay Buccaneers, there were multitudes of professional baseball teams littered throughout the area.
The first instance recorded of Major League Baseball coming to Florida and the Tampa Bay area was when the Chicago Cubs set up their Spring Training home, moving into Plant Field, built by business magnate Henry Plant in 1899, in downtown Tampa prior to the 1913 season.
Soon the Cubs moved out, but more teams moved in. The Boston Red Sox followed and brought along with them young phenom Babe Ruth. It was in 1919 that Babe Ruth clobbered a ball that is estimated to have been hit 587 feet. There is now a plaque commemorating this achievement, placed in the area that once used to be Plant Field.
Over time, more teams came to the area. Major League Baseball moved in every Spring for Spring Training; the Negro League and several semi-pro teams played over the summer.
Al Lopez was just one among the many locals who played in a semi-pro league. Lopez suited up for the Tampa Smokers in 1924 at the age of 16. During a series of exhibition games, Lopez impressed future Hall of Famer Walter Johnson, who convinced the White Sox to attempt to sign him. Things didn’t work out, but Lopez still gained valuable experience and eventually carved his own path to the big leagues.
Ultimately, Lopez would play in the majors from 1928 through 1947. After retiring, Lopez was remembered as being one of the most durable catchers in baseball history and then later as one of the most successful managers of all-time; Lopez would be enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1977.
In 1954, while Lopez was managing the pennant winning Cleveland Guardians, Tampa opened a new minor league facility and named it after the city’s accomplished son, even though his baseball career was not yet done.
Lopez would later on manage the Chicago White Sox, who made Al Lopez Field their Spring Training home for several years. This led to Al Lopez managing games at Al Lopez Field and a humorous moment when an umpire was threatening to eject him from a game. Lopez responded to the umpire by saying “You can’t throw me out of this ballpark. This is my ballpark.” Lopez was promptly ejected from the game anyway.
Al Lopez Field was demolished in 1989 in the hopes of building a new Major League Baseball stadium, while the city actively negotiating for several teams to make the move. Unfortunately, MLB never came calling to Tampa as a site for full season activity. Instead, the National Football League, which had already set up shop beside Al Lopez Field in the 1970s, erected what became known locally as The Sombrero on its former site.
Thus, baseball was officially gone from Tampa. That is, until the New York Yankees came to town (as is so often the case, northern teams had spring training homes wherever their owners “wintered,”) and the city of Tampa paid every expense to build them a new stadium to serve as their new Spring Training home and minor league field throughout the season.
The stadium would be built across the street from the Buccaneers home, now called Raymond James Stadium at the former site of Al Lopez Field, and the Yankees began their residency at the newly built Legends Field in 1996.
The stadium’s design paid homage to Yankees history with similar dimensions set up on the playing field. There are multiple plaques outside of the stadium commemorating all of the retired numbers in Yankees history.
Meanwhile, in 1990 the city of St Petersburg made its own gambit for a baseball team, building a stadium that would go on to hold hockey games before Pinellas County was finally successful in gaining an expansion team as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays came into existence in 1995. Al Lopez, along with Monte Irvin, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial, would throw out the ceremonial first pitch.
The Yankees have made Legends Field, in the heart of Tampa Bay, their Spring Training home every year since moving there in 1996, notably the year after the Devil Rays were announced, but before the team’s identity could take over the area.
Following the death of longtime Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, the field was redubbed George Steinbrenner Field and a statue was commissioned to further honor Steinbrenner’s legacy (Editor’s Note: presumably that legacy might not include the parts where he was convicted of multiple felonies, pardoned by Ronald Reagan, and then later “banned for life” from baseball before his reinstatement).
The stadium and complex has been renovated several times making the overall facility one of the top spring training and minor league ballparks in the game. In 2016, Hillsborough County approved a $40M (split evenly between the Yankees, Hillsborough County, and the state of Florida) renovation that was key to an agreement that keeps the Yankees in Tampa through 2046.
During these renovations, new construction was undertaken to add outfield concourses with shaded gathering spots. Additionally, access passages to the ballpark were improved and several new upscale seating options or amenities for fans at the games. New loge boxes, cabanas, and suite upgrades were installed, while a beachside bar was erected along the seats in right field. The renovations also included several enhancements to the full training complex. It’s these enhancements that likely led the Rays and MLB to select it for use following the damage to Tropicana Field by Hurricane Milton.
What was called Legends Field may not have been where the Legends were made, but it’s where they are remembered, and it is here the Rays will add to that legend as they play their home games for the 2025 season.
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