The Rays and MLB are now adjusting to the team playing the 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, and in the case of the schedule, literally so. 

Less than two weeks after a deal was finalized for the Rays to play their home games next year at the Yankees’ spring training complex, MLB has changed two parts of the schedule to account for the outdoor locale. A home-and-home series with the Angels in April and August was flipped in which the earlier games will now happen in Tampa and the later ones in Anaheim, Calif. The same reversal was also done with a separate set of home-and-home series with the Twins in May and July. 

The shifts now further concentrate the Rays’ 2025 home schedule to the very beginning and end of the season, when the likelihood of extreme heat and rain in Florida is lower. The Rays will now play 47 of their first 59 games overall at home, and then go on the road for 69 of the final 103. 

The extreme nature of that schedule will no doubt put a premium on the team getting off to a strong start competitively. But in the club’s nearly three decades of play, it’s never played home games outside of a domed facility, and MLB said “these proactive schedule adjustments have been made to optimize the number of games played in the best weather conditions given the Rays’ transition to an outdoor ballpark.”

Steinbrenner Field is also the home facility for the Tampa Tarpons, a Yankees minor league affiliate. That club has had to deal with the vagaries of Florida weather playing outdoors, and with the Rays’ arrival next year, will shift to a back field at the Yankees’ complex. 

Other planned modifications by the Rays at Steinbrenner Field include covering up much of the existing Yankees signage at the ballpark and potentially tweaking some game start times to avoid some of the worst of Florida’s rainy season. 

Political Tension 

Those activities, meanwhile, are happening while the relationship between the club and Tampa-area public officials continues to deteriorate. Earlier this week, Pinellas County, Fla., commission chair Kathleen Peters issued an ultimatum demanding the team detail in writing by Sunday its intentions on a proposed $1.3 billion stadium. 

That stance closely follows both the county and city of St. Petersburg delaying votes to issue public-sector bonds covering nearly half of the stadium cost, and the retraction of an appropriation to replace the Tropicana Field roof shredded by Hurricane Milton. 

Rays co-president Brian Auld responded to the county’s demand with a fairly noncommittal statement, saying, “We are eager to work with all partners on a solution for the 2029 season that keeps Major League Baseball in Tampa Bay for generations to come. As we always have, we will maintain contact with the city and county as we navigate our future.”

As the Bears prepare for a Thanksgiving Day matchup in Detroit against the NFC North rival Lions, the team’s quest for a new stadium in Chicago continues to take twists and turns.

On Monday, the Bears and the village of Arlington Heights reached a tentative agreement to settle a longstanding property tax dispute that prevented the team from moving forward with plans to build a new stadium on the 326 acres it owns on the site of an old horse racing track.

In April, the Bears unveiled a plan to build a $4.7 billion dome adjacent to their current home, Soldier Field, in downtown Chicago. They are seeking more than $2 billion in public funding, which would need to come from the state of Illinois, and is far from being approved.

After Monday’s news, the Bears in a statement said they “remain focused” on efforts to build said dome in Chicago, but they left the door open for other options.

“That being said, we remain significant landowners in Arlington Heights and establishing a framework for potential future development planning, financing and property tax certainty has been a priority since the land was purchased,” the statement read in part. “We continue to have productive conversations with the village and school districts and are aligned on a framework should we choose to explore a potential development.”

Arlington Heights officials in their statement said they “continue to believe Arlington Heights remains an incredible opportunity for the Chicago Bears” and that they “look forward to future conversations.”

The earliest any state funding for a new Bears stadium could even start to move toward being approved would be the spring of 2025. 

A potential move to Arlington Heights would see the Bears follow in the footsteps of the Browns, who are focusing their efforts on building a $2.4 billion dome in a Cleveland suburb, as opposed to renovating their downtown stadium or building a new one nearby.