TAMPA, FL: Today the Rays gave the media its first look inside the Tampa Bay Rays home for the 2025 season.

Essentially the team has a little more than four days to turn the Spring Training home of the Yankees into the regular season home of the Tampa Bay Rays, an all out effort involving nearly all the team’s staff as well as outside contractors.

Bill Walsh, the Team’s Chief Business Officer, outlined some of the changes they have made. Some are not visible to most fans, including improvements such as upgraded Wifi and better umpire facilities

Most obvious to visitors is the effort to rebrand the stadium, and you might not even realize how much Yankee there is in the stadium until you try to erase it or cover it over. The merchandise in all the team stores has been replaced, and the team has tried to replace Yankee signage and banners, some instances more successful than others.

The dugouts look great:

The more challenging efforts to cover the “Yankees” lettering around the stadium doesn’t look quite as good:

While the move-in has had to happen in just a few days, the team has been preparing for the move since the move to Steinbrenner Field was announced, with what the team spokespeople called “art” ordered well in advance. Little was brought over from the Trop, since in so many cases dimensions and placement are so different.

The team also has to make some cost-benefit analyses about what can and can’t be rebranded. Zooming in on the seats, you’ll see that there is a Yankee logo at the head of each row:

Putting decals over each of these would be a major undertaking, and then those decals would most likely start peeling off within a few weeks.

The team made great efforts to turn the home player areas into a completely Yankee-free zone, however. There is fabric draped over a Yankee ceiling ornament in the clubhouse, and even the therapy tables have lost their Yankee branding, with caps covering Yankee logos even in the whirlpools.

When we were there, most of the televisions were tuned to the Yankee owned YES network. Taylor Wall, who manages the facilities, said they would be figuring out how to change the television broadcasts this afternoon.

Apart from branding, the player spaces are all extremely high quality. I heard some of the beat reporters saying they thought the Legends Field clubhouse was roomier and had more upgrades than the one at Tropicana Field.

During the season, reporters are restricted to the clubhouse so I’ve never seen the Tropicana Field training and workout areas, but those in Tampa are very nice and have something I am sure they lacked in St. Pete: natural light.

Somewhat oddly, visiting players who enter their clubhouse are greeted with this:

For those of us who have gotten used to large and increasingly interesting food and drink offerings at Tropicana Field, this year may be somewhat of a letdown. The Rays will be working with the Legends Field concessionaires, and my recollection from past Spring Training games is that the selection of food is limited. Expect much more traditional ballpark fare, although there are a few local concessionaires like Coppertail Brewing who will follow the Rays to Tampa.

One of the upsides of the move to outdoors is that the team can finally have fireworks, which we will see during evening games to celebrate a homerun or a win. And there is now an official sponsor of rain delays! (Budweiser, if you are wondering).