As a second hurricane in two weeks took aim at the Tampa Bay region last October, the Yankees did what they always do: They pitched in, turning George M. Steinbrenner Field -- their Spring Training ballpark and the regular home of the Single-A Tampa Tarpons -- into a shelter for employees seeking refuge.
For as much as the franchise is synonymous with New York -- particularly the Bronx -- the Yankees employ hundreds of staffers in Florida, split between the Spring Training facility and the organization’s Minor League headquarters a few blocks east. And as catastrophic forecasts caused mandatory evacuation orders around the Tampa Bay region, the Yankees took care of their own.
Well-constructed and sitting at what passes for high elevation in a coastal city, GMS Field, which opened in 1996, provides a secure shelter during dangerous weather. Nearly 100 employees (and some pets) rode the storm out together there in safety. “It’s something the Steinbrenner family has been really strong about doing,” said Tony Bruno, Yankees senior vice president and CFO of Yankee Global Enterprises.
In the end, the hurricanes caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage and claimed dozens of lives. But considering the warnings, it was clear how much worse things could have been had the storm’s track not changed slightly. Tampa actually got lucky.
The Tampa Bay Rays couldn’t say the same. The defining image of Hurricane Milton’s wrath would become Tropicana Field, with the few spare remnants of its fiberglass roof whipping in the wind.
Yankees reliever Ryan Yarbrough pitched five seasons for the Rays, and he still lives in Tampa with his wife and kids. They evacuated to Orlando when the storm was approaching, and he saw the pictures of the Trop’s roof, just like everyone else did. But beyond that, he said, “You see people with all their belongings on the corner because their homes are flooded from the storms.” In those moments, what stands out are the people who offer a hand.
Upon returning to Tampa for a four-game set against his former team at Steinbrenner Field in April, the left-hander saw firsthand how his new team is willing to do just that.
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A baseball lifer, Aaron Boone is a sucker for the sport’s oddities. “One of my obsessions as a kid, and even to this day, is seeing the wrong home uniforms in the wrong ballpark,” he said. So, when he turned on the Rays’ March 28 home opener at the Boss, he was instantly transfixed. “It was the first thing I noticed: [Ryan] Pepiot running to the mound with the white Rays uniform on in the ‘wrong’ ballpark.”
Boone and the Yankees played the Rays at the Mets’ Citi Field in 2017, when Tampa Bay home games were moved out of caution due to an approaching hurricane. In 2025, the Rays had to move their entire home slate. The Yankees’ first regular-season trip to Steinbrenner Field came just three weeks into the season, and Boone found himself anticipating the return. It was a novel wrinkle, and in the repetitive monotony of a baseball existence, new things are fun.
For his players, the sensation was a bit weirder. Over six weeks during Spring Training, they raved about the incredible amenities on the home side of newly renovated GMS Field. Going back as visitors, they would have access to none of them. The road side, like in most Minor League parks and certainly in most Spring Training facilities, had been somewhat spartan. A lot of work had to be done to make Steinbrenner Field big league ready, almost all of it for the visiting teams.
“That home clubhouse didn’t need another dollar of improvement,” Bruno said, “but the visiting side really did because that was not up to the standard. It was part of our plan to improve that dramatically for Spring Training.”
Boone set up shop in a nondescript office, the only decorations a canvas map of the Tampa Bay region and a wall-mounted television. Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash’s comfortable office, meanwhile, received a new addition while the Yankees were in town: a bottle of tequila. The good stuff, Boone insisted.
Boone left a note before the Yankees decamped in March, but he forgot to leave the liquor. “So, I sent it over today, which is a little anticlimactic,” he said before the first game on April 17. “Kind of my housewarming gift. Take care of the place. Good luck in the season. See you soon. Enjoy it. Make yourself at home.”
The games themselves took some getting used to. Boone spends Spring Training contests sitting behind netting on the field, next to the home dugout. During the real games, he was tucked against a wall in a corner of the visitors’ dugout with a view he didn’t particularly enjoy. “It’s fine,” he said. “I like the other side better.”
There was plenty of weirdness to go around. Aaron Judge was pleased to make it through the weekend without accidentally running into the first-base dugout on his jog in from right field, but as he learned on Easter Sunday, even the best Minor League parks force some concessions. In a tight game, Judge positively crushed a ball down the left-field line, a sure homer to almost everyone in the ballpark except the third-base umpire, who called it foul. The problem was that Steinbrenner Field’s foul poles are much shorter than those at Yankee Stadium (30 feet compared to 90 feet), and despite what appeared to be clear video evidence that the orbital blast -- with a trajectory akin to something leaving Cape Canaveral on the other side of the state -- was fair, there wasn’t a single, unimpeachable camera angle that would allow replay officials to overturn the call.
For the Rays, who will play at least 81 games at the Boss, it is all odd and novel, but not as much as you might think. The teams that visit will all have largely the same experience (even if, unlike the Yankees, they don’t have their own history there). “They’re going to come in and say, ‘Oh, this is strange being over here. OK, let’s go about our business,’” Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe predicted. “Nothing will be any different.”
Surveying the Yankees, Lowe was right. Most admitted that it was weird. Most acknowledged that it felt off. But no one expected anything other than fairly normal baseball games. As Max Fried put it the day before he pitched 7 2/3 innings of two-hit ball, “We played through 2020 -- COVID. That was way different. This is all the same.”
Even with regard to behind-the-scenes amenities, nothing was fancy, but neither was anything missing. It was all a bit more spread out -- the dining room here, the coaches’ workroom there, the weight room and batting cages in a separate building outside -- but it was all available. “It’s really nice,” Yarbrough said, comparing it favorably to other road clubhouses around the league. “For a visiting side, it can be hit or miss. But it’s a good size, and you’re able to get everything you need in.”
Carlos Rodón did notice one thing right away. While he has pitched plenty of games at GMS Field in Spring Training, that time of year is always about working to fine-tune things, not worrying about ballpark dimensions. Surveying his surroundings during the series’ first game, he realized how little foul territory there is -- a pitcher’s nightmare and a recipe for long games.
It didn’t seem to affect him, though. Yankees fans always made themselves at home in the Trop, and all four games at GMS saw the visiting team enjoy what sounded like a decided home-field advantage.
Indeed, when Rodón was nearing the end of a strong outing on Friday night, he found himself in a two-out, full-count situation, the fans rising to their feet. The only thing missing was the Star Wars sound that Yankee Stadium blasts in those moments, or the PC Richard jingle after the eventual punchout. It felt like a Bronx start on a familiar mound, just wearing road grays instead of pinstripes.
“It definitely felt like a home game,” Rodón said afterward. It’s just … home teams don’t typically lose on walk-off homers, as the Yankees did in the series’ third game.
The weird quirks were everywhere.
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The Rays have adopted something of an organizational philosophy when it comes to the oddities they expect in 2025: Bring ’em on.
“I said in my welcome remarks to the media right before Opening Day, ‘Welcome to George M. Steinbrenner Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays,’” said Rays chief business officer Bill Walsh. “That was not on my bingo card of things that would come out of my mouth, this year or ever.”
Making it all happen was a gargantuan undertaking. The Yankees shipped out from GMS on Sunday, March 23; the Rays held their first game there on March 28. In between, the spring home of the New York Yankees was transformed into a passable stand-in for Tropicana Field. From around mid-November, when the partnership plan was announced, up until Opening Day, Walsh’s 60-person team spent nearly every minute getting ready. He estimates that there were 3,000 unique pieces of art and signage that had to be changed out, everywhere from the concourses to the banners on light posts to the home clubhouse. Meanwhile, they had to accommodate Rays season-ticket holders (whose renewal date came before the storms changed everything) and corporate partners.
About the only things that didn’t change were the massive NY logo at the ballpark’s lobby entrance (although it does now have Rays marks below it), and the top hat logos at the end of every row of seats. (When you only have four days to overhaul a stadium’s visual identity, you have to make some choices.) The Rays were given essentially two rules: Keep the George M. Steinbrenner Field name, and don’t touch the life-size statue of the Boss that greets fans entering the park. Otherwise, it was theirs for the year.
“The agreement with them is, ‘You can do whatever you want, as long as it comes back the way it was when you got it,’” Bruno said.
Innovation -- even forced innovation -- is in the Rays’ DNA. Still, one of many uncomfortable parts of the whole experience, as the team scrambles to figure out what the future holds, is that there wasn’t a lot of love for the Trop before any of this. Everyone knows that the Rays were looking to leave that odd, cavernous dome across the bay in St. Petersburg for a more modern venue, perhaps even in a more convenient location. Suddenly, though, a building never meant to drain water was flooded, an unfortunate symbol of a team battered by destiny and fate.
“It took an act of God and Mother Nature to put us in this situation, right?” said Rays pitcher Drew Rasmussen. “So, we are grateful and thankful to the Yankees -- which is a funny thing to say -- for allowing us to use the facility. But also, as far as this regular season goes, this is our home, not theirs. … They’ve given us the permission to call this home, and that’s what we’re doing.”
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Junior Caminero had a superb rookie year for Tampa Bay in 2024, and when the team checked out its new home clubhouse before Opening Day, he noticed an unusual item: One of Giancarlo Stanton’s bats. The third baseman is using the slugger’s spring locker this year, and while he was wowed by the bat, he didn’t know quite what to do with it.
“That’s his bat,” Caminero said, assisted by a team interpreter. “I’m just going to leave it there until he gets back here next year. Because nobody has told me that it’s mine.”
Stanton insisted that it was a gift, and that he wanted to leave something for Caminero. But you figure that it won’t be the only time Rays players wonder just how comfortable they’re supposed to make themselves in another team’s ballpark. For the short term, at least, they’re thrilled.
“The training room is huge,” said catcher Ben Rortvedt, who spent two years in the Yankees organization from 2022-23. “All the tubs and stuff, a lot of people are spending time recovering in there. I think the main thing is, there’s so much natural light. … We can actually look outside and see what time it is.”
The GMS Field home clubhouse truly is a marvel; no expense was spared. “It is amazing to have that as our Spring Training home now,” Boone said. “It’s really awesome, and guys really took advantage of it this year.” But the Rays made sure to get the little things right. There’s a dartboard on one wall, a golf chipping mat on the floor, fishing poles against a wall. Obviously, a team needs great weight equipment and practice facilities, but a clubhouse also needs to feel like home.
And for all the questions about how weird it would feel for the Yankees to be on the visiting side, Cash said, “It was probably odder yesterday, playing at Steinbrenner Field and it’s the Red Sox against the Rays.” At least when the Yankees are playing the Rays at Steinbrenner Field, it makes some sense.
On the field, it didn’t always look so easy. The wind swirled in all directions, only occasionally matching the direction in which the flags were waving. Between that and the high sky and the setting sun, every fly ball was a momentary challenge. And while Steinbrenner Field has almost the exact same field dimensions as Yankee Stadium, it doesn’t have a third deck -- a significant aerodynamic factor. When Judge hits a ball as he did on Friday night -- 110.3 mph off the bat with a 23-degree launch angle -- you expect it to clear the wall in center, not die 20 feet short of the warning track.
The Rays will adjust to the peculiarities. MLB front-loaded their schedule with home games to avoid the worst of the Florida heat and rain in July and August (though the Yankees will have to return for two games on Aug. 19-20). But there are opportunities, as well. The team gets to play on the Tampa side of the bay for the first time, in a location that many fans can get to easily. The Rays sold out their first 19 home games -- 10,046 fans loving almost every minute. And eventually, Tampa Bay will enjoy a weird first, one that lights a businessman’s heart.
“Budweiser is sponsoring our rain delay,” Walsh said. “We’ve never sold a rain delay before.”
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The Rays lost three of four games in the April series as the Yankees maintained their hot start to the season. It was tough sledding for the home team, as the sellout crowds kept rooting on the visitors. After José Caballero made a dazzling catch to rob Ben Rice of a home run in the second game, fans immediately began chanting “MVP!” for the next batter, Judge.
“It’s not an ideal circumstance for the Rays,” YES announcer Michael Kay said at one point, “but hurricanes aren’t ideal situations, either.”
And for all the quirks, there was a real tragedy at the heart of it all. Watching the Yankees play as visitors in their Spring Training home is the kind of baseball wackiness fans rightly love. But people died in the storms, and many more lost so much that was irreplaceable.
Yet everyone is intent on making the best of the situation. Alternate versions of this story had the Rays playing far away; maybe at their Triple-A stadium in Durham, N.C., or in one of the cities constantly working to pump up its own big league credentials. Instead, playing at Steinbrenner Field allowed the Rays to stay in their home region. Players didn’t need to become transient for a full year. Tropicana Field employees didn’t lose their jobs or have to relocate.
“The days after the storm, when we were starting to realize how badly the building was impacted, we thought it was not probable that we would be playing [in Tampa Bay],” Walsh said. “This was a one-two punch to this region that I think a lot of the rest of the country [has forgotten about]. The world keeps turning. People move on. But there are a lot of folks still here in this community that are impacted. They’re just issuing building permits for homes out on the beaches for folks that have been suffering for months and months. So many businesses and residents were impacted, ourselves among them. So, we desperately wanted to find a way to be here, to play Major League Baseball here, for the 2025 season.”
It’s notable that when you walk into the visitors’ clubhouse at GMS Field, the first thing you see is a giant photo of the Trop’s battered dome. It’s as if to remind everyone, Let’s not complain about any of this. It could be so much worse.
Most fans, though, will never see that photo, or any of the behind-the-scenes work that went into prepping George M. Steinbrenner Field for this most unusual relief role. What everyone can see, though, even without buying a ticket, is the message on the back of the stadium’s huge scoreboard, facing the cars traveling down Dale Mabry Highway. “Rays Up” screams the team’s marketing slogan for the season. Just below that, though, is one simple sentence:
“Thank you, Yankees!”
“We tried to set the tone with our entire staff,” Walsh said. “We tried to recognize and cultivate that type of attitude and mentality early on of being grateful for what the Yankees organization did. It’s something that we wanted our staff to know, that we wanted the community to know. That’s an important message when folks here are coming to work.”
The Yankees will spend the year fighting the Rays in the AL East standings. They will seek every advantage possible to come out ahead after 162 games. Baseball players are competitors, and baseball teams endure by winning. But the Steinbrenners live in Tampa. The family is known for its charitable efforts in the area, and George’s surviving children, Hal, Jenny and Jessica, take great pride in being community leaders in Tampa as well as New York. So, just as when they made GMS Field a place of refuge last fall, the Steinbrenners determined it was only right to move the Tampa Tarpons next door for one season and help a neighbor in need. As Bruno said, it’s not about cheering for the Rays on the field; it’s about making sure the Rays even have a field.
“Everyone has the same philosophy. It’s, Hey, this is the right thing to do*,*” Bruno said. “There was never a, ‘That’s not possible.’ There was never a question. There was never hesitation. There was never any of that. Hal recognized, the same way that if your neighbor’s roof blew off and they needed a place to stay, you would bring them in. That’s the way he reacted. And that’s the way this family has treated its community for so many years.”
Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the May 2025 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.