Tropicana Field

Tampa Bay Rays, American League

7/10

A relatively staid exterior is souped up with a giant banner of all the Rays' stars.

Behold, the dome in all it's beauty. It looks like it belongs in Japan, but being there, it didn't totally seem out of place for MLB.

Did not leave my seat the entire game here, so this is as good as I did.

I went to my first game at "The Trop" in 2012, having come from Pensacola the night before. I had heard a lot of negative feedback about the dome and I'm here to tell you it's a little overblown. Firstly, yes, the dome is a cave. There is a big white roof that does, thankfully let in some light and it will darken slightly when the sun goes down. There's a lot of white concrete and the backdrop is very boring, even for a domed stadium. That having been said, there was a pretty good downpour outside for about 3 innings, which we completely ignored, even a retractable design may not have been so fortunate. The parking here is actually really well organized too. It may have just seemed that way because of the lower attendance, but it flowed well, with cars coming down a big aisle in the middle to park and leaving via multiple exits onto the street on the opposite side. It was a welcome relief after "carmegaddon" a few nights prior in Atlanta. Still, the park is slightly below average overall.

The surprise here was the food. Pulled pork sandwich that wasn't bad, but there were about 10 kinds of BBQ sauce available, you pick AND self-serve. There seemed to be a lot of options, but the thing was the areas around the concessions were very large and removed from the concourse, to prevent crowding. Not sure how much trouble it saved at a sparsely attended park like this, but was welcome.

The atmosphere here was above average as well, with the Detroit Tigers as the visitors, a fair number of Tiger rooters showed up which barely saved this place from a 6/10. It gets the slightest 7 of all time, but even Tropicana Field manages to be average, in the end.

Update 2021: I have revised this one down to a 6. The atmosphere from the visiting/local Tiger fans was enjoyable for sure, but the home team generates very little. The facility is one of the bottom 3 MLB parks I've been to, although the concession was apparently ok. I still haven't been back here. Perhaps I'm due? Maybe if I did the very end of spring training, then into this.

Linescore

2012-06-28               

                        123   456  789  R H E

Detroit              002  101 001  5 15 1 

Tampa Bay       000  010  100  2 6 2 

Temp: 72F/Dome   Time: 3:05  Att: 20,532