TROPICANA FIELD

'Tropicana Field' is a domed stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida, which has been the home of Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Devil Rays since 1998.

Contents

History

Ted Williams Museum/Hitters Hall of Fame

Criticisms

See also

Photo Gallery

References

External links

History

The ballpark originally began construction in 1986 in the hope that it would lure a Major League Baseball team to the Tampa Bay area. It was taken for granted that a domed stadium was necessary for a prospective major league team to be viable in the area, due to its extremely hot, humid summers and frequent thunderstorms.
The stadium, built originally as the 'Florida Suncoast Dome', was first used in an attempt to entice the Chicago White Sox to relocate if a new ballpark were not built to replace the aging Comiskey Park. The governments of Chicago and Illinois eventually agreed to build a New Comiskey Park (now known as U.S. Cellular Field) in 1989.
The stadium was finished in 1990, but still had no tenants. There were rumors of the Seattle Mariners moving in the early part of the 1990s, and the San Francisco Giants came close to moving to the area, with Tampa Bay investors even announcing they were in a press conference in 1992. However, the sale was blocked under pressure from San Francisco officials and the then-owner of the Florida Marlins, Blockbuster Video Chairman H. Wayne Huizenga. A local boycott of Blockbuster Video stores occurred for several years thereafter.
The Suncoast Dome did manage to gain a tenant in 1993 when the Tampa Bay Lightning made the stadium its home for three seasons. In the process, the Suncoast Dome was renamed the 'Thunderdome'. Because of the large capacity of what was basically a park built for baseball, several NHL attendance records were set during their time there. The Tampa Bay Storm of the AFL also played there during the Thunderdome era, and set attendance records for that league as well.
Finally, in 1995, the dome got a baseball team when MLB expanded to the Tampa Bay area. Changes were made to the stadium and the name, which was changed due to the sale of naming rights to Tropicana Products, thus renaming it Tropicana Field in 1996. A $70 million renovation then took place — to upgrade a stadium that had cost $115 million to complete only eight years earlier. Ebbets Field was the model for the renovations, which included a replica of the famous rotunda that greeted Dodger fans for many years. The first regular season baseball game took place at the park on March 31, 1998, when the Devil Rays faced the Detroit Tigers, losing 11-6.
Although Tropicana was purchased by PepsiCo in 1998, PepsiCo did not elect to make any changes to Tropicana's naming rights.
The walkway to the main entrance of the park features a 900ft.-long (272 m) ceramic tile mosaic, made of 1,849,091 one-inch-square tiles. It is the largest outdoor tile mosaic in Florida, and the fifth-largest in the United States. ^[1]
The park was initially built with an AstroTurf surface, but it was replaced in 2000 by softer FieldTurf, becoming the first major professional facility to use it. A new version of FieldTurf, FieldTurf Duo, was installed prior to the 2007 season. Unlike the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Rogers Centre, the other remaining FieldTurf baseball facilities, Tropicana Field converted from a sliding pit infield configuration popular with artificial turf facilities since the 1970s to a full clay infield when the first FieldTurf surface was installed. On August 6, 2007, the clay warning track will be replaced by brown-colored FieldTurf Duo.
The roof is lit orange whenever the Devil Rays win at home.
In 2006 the Devil Rays added a live Ray tank to Tropicana Field. People can go up to the tank to touch the Rays.
Tropicana Field underwent a further $25-million facelift prior to the 2006 season. Another $10 million in improvements was added during the season. Further improvements prior to the 2007 offseason, in addition to the new FieldTurf, include additional family features in the right field area and the creation of a new premium club in the first base-side mezzanine sponsored by Whitney Bank, and several new video boards including a new 35ft. x 64ft. (10.5m x 19.4m) main video board that is four times larger than the original video board. The 2007 renovation also added built-in high-definition television capabilities to the ballpark, with FSN Florida and WXPX airing at least a quarter of the schedule in HD in 2007, and all video board graphics and video being produced in HD as well.

Ted Williams Museum/Hitters Hall of Fame

In 2006, the 'Ted Williams Museum/Hitters Hall of Fame' was moved to the facility after its original facility in Hernando, Florida, went bankrupt. A new 7,000-square-foot upstairs wing was opened in 2007, which now houses the exhibits on Ted Williams' careers both with the Boston Red Sox and the United States Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War, and the monuments to the members of the Hitters Hall of Fame complete with memorabilia, with donated authentic memorabilia wherever possible and many of Williams' own personal mementos from his career and post-playing life. Williams did not induct himself into his own Hitters Hall of Fame, and was inducted in 2003 only after he died.
The museum is open during game days, opening and closing at the same time as the park. Admission is free, and the museum is open to all ticketholders.

Criticisms

Among the most cited criticisms about the stadium are the four catwalks that hang from the ceiling. The roof was slanted in order to reduce the interior volume, reduce cooling costs, and better protect the stadium from hurricanes. Therefore, the dome is tilted toward the outfield, resulting in the catwalks being lower in the outfield. The upper catwalks are Ring A and Ring B; these catwalks are entirely in play and balls bouncing off them can be caught for outs, or drop for base hits. Ring C and Ring D are out of play; if they are struck between the foul poles (each one has a yellow post marking the relative foul line position), then the ball is ruled a home run. A few hits have been lost in them – for example, Devil Ray Jonny Gomes was called out during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays on May 12, 2006, when a ball he hit landed in Ring B and rolled off to be caught by Toronto shortstop John McDonald. By the time it was caught, Gomes was already headed for home plate. Although Rays manager Joe Maddon tried to argue that it should have been at least a ground rule double since it stayed in Ring B for a while before coming loose, umpires eventually ruled against the Devil Rays and called Gomes out.
Another criticism of the stadium is the drab interior environment; although the stadium is located in a subtropical climate, one cannot tell from inside the dome. The interior has been compared to a large warehouse. However, since it is somewhat smaller than most domes, where most domes of the day were football-oriented and Tropicana Field was designed specifically with baseball in mind, the atmosphere is somewhat more intimate than other domed stadiums.
The dome was built on the former site of a coal gasification plant and in 1987 hazardous chemicals were found in the soil around the construction site. The city spent millions of dollars to remove the chemicals from the area.^[2]

See also

★ St. Pete Times Forum, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Storm

★ Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Photo Gallery

References

1. http://tampabay.devilrays.mlb.com/tb/ballpark/index.jsp
2. Costs triple for cleanup of soil at dome

External links

★ Ballpark Digest review of Tropicana Field

★ Official website of Tropicana Field