Charlotte Sports Park

Tampa Bay Rays, Spring Training
Charlotte Stone Crabs, Florida State League

7/10

The relatively simple entrance to the park.

A Colombian conference at the mound.

Looking in on the refurbished stadium bowl.

I crossed Florida after a day game at Port St. Lucie, to take in a night game at Port Charlotte, featuring the Tampa Bay Rays and Colombian national team. I got hung up in the exodus from that first game of the day and traffic was somewhat unhelpful, so I arrived around the second inning or so. The evening's contest saw a pre-tournament game for the Colombian entry in the upcoming World Baseball Classic and thanks to some Rays pitchers being loaned over and a ninth inning rally, they ended up coming back and beating the Rays.

This was originally the site for Spring Training for the Texas Rangers, from 1987-2002, prior to that team pulling up stakes and heading west to Surprise Stadium. After this, the team hosted one season of the Independent South Coast League in 2007, before renovations lured the Rays to set up Spring Training and a Florida State League team here in 2009.

The park is a pretty average place, which shows it's age only in its design. It's clean and well maintined. Zaxby's chicken sandwiches appear to be the menu item of choice, because they were sold out by the time I showed up. I remember the food here being markedly average. The only thing that stands out here is the atmosphere. The Rays are the Rays, so despite being the 2nd closest MLB team to their hometown for Spring Training, they don't draw so well. But, with ticket prices substantially lower than anywhere else in Florida, actual people show up for these games, which makes the atmosphere pretty authentic. When I went on my walk to get pictures of the stands from the outfield, a woman asked the Rays' bullpen coach a question, calling him by his first name and received a prompt "Yes, ma'am.", then an answer. Bullpen coach Stan Boroski explained how the Colombian team only wanted to use bullpen pitchers in the game and the Rays had agreed to put in some of theirs once everyone in that Colombian bullpen had had a turn. I'm not sure if at some of the bigger parks, this conversation would have happened so easily.

In summary, I'm more than happy that a place like this could lose it's team, do some renos and get an MLB team back in town, but it's nothing overly impressive. I'd maybe give a half point for atmosphere, but it really doesn't matter, as everything else is average. 7/10.



Linescore
2017-03-08
                         123   456   789   R H E
Colombia            001  100  016   9 10 1
Tampa Bay          140  020  000  7 8 3
Temp: N/A  Time: N/A  Att: N/A