Rays Held Yard Sale Before ‘Turning Over Keys’ To Tropicana Field For Roof Repairs

Bill Walsh likened the preparation for the Tampa Bay Rays’ charity yard sale held Saturday to an average household’s spring cleaning. The many items collected range from mugs to shirts and everything in between. In the process, there might a surprise or two in the form of something that had been long forgotten about, but evoked a memory or two.

“Everyone that does spring cleaning in their house, I think they find things they didn’t know they had,” said Walsh, the Rays’ chief business officer. “It is pretty much the same here on a different scale.”

A different scale? How about 28 seasons worth of promotional items and other inventory. Then there were a few items scheduled to be given away to fans that were, well, not given away. An example would be a Willy Adames bobblehead that was scheduled to be handed out to attending fans at Tropicana Field on May 30, 2020. Nobody was going to baseball games, or doing much of anything else, on that date due to the pandemic. When the season finally began in late July, fans were not permitted to attend.

The Adames bobble, and other items, were added to the following season’s promotional schedule. Hence, the Rays announced June 9, 2021 would be the date the collectible would finally be handed out. However, the shortstop was dealt to the Brewers on May 21. What to do with all of the bobbleheads? The answer arrived nearly four years later when they were available to those attending the Rays’ yard sale in the Trop parking lot.

Similarly, and more recently, the Rays were to give away a set of three shoe charms to kids 14 and under last August 11. The players featured were Yandy Diaz, Zach Eflin and Josh Lowe. Eflin was dealt to the Orioles on July 26. Guess which team the Rays played the day the item would have been given away? In fact, Eflin, with his new team, blanked Tampa Bay over seven innings to pick up the win two days earlier. Kids finally got the charms at the yard sale.

“We have had a chance to put eyes on everything in all parts of the building over the last six months or so in a way that we just haven’t in the last 25-plus years,” said Walsh, of scavenging Tropicana Field post-Hurricane Milton and gathering more than 75,000 items for the public to pick through. “Almost any promotional giveaway we had, there were some left over that we found.”

Such items included bobbleheads, sweatshirts, t-shirts, tumblers, blankets and those related to group nights such as in-state universities (USF Day or UCF Day) and other themed celebrations.

The many fans who weathered the rain in St. Petersburg on Saturday morning while waiting to enter two tents that had table after table full of items paid $20 for a bag they could overstuff. When the bag was full, fans could pay another $20 for each additional bag. The opportunity made for yard sale-type bargains considering what someone could walk away with.

City to take over Trop

The city of St. Petersburg announced in early April that it approved $23 million for “…the cost of fabrication, delivery, and installation of PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) roof membrane.” In other words, the Trop will receive a new top. Walsh noted the hope was prep work would commence in mid-June with exterior repairs visible perhaps eight weeks thereafter. With that in mind, it was time to perform the massive spring cleaning and then get out of the way.

“The genesis of this is really the city taking on the repair of the roof,” said Walsh. “What we are going to do is turn over the keys of the building to the city for that period of time. We need to get everything that is ours out of the way so they can work. There will be hundreds of workers setting up to install (roof) panels, which be in August.”

Hence, it was time to get busy with literally taking inventory on what was hiding in storage spaces and other areas of the building and making the items available to fans. Several Rays employees made the day possible with the Rays Baseball Foundation, the ballclub’s charitable arm, benefitting from the sale.

“It all came together in three weeks,” said Walsh, somewhat joking the Rays have had to become accustomed to doing most everything in tight windows this year, including the massive chore of getting Steinbrenner Field ready for the regular season in a matter of a few days. “A lot of folks really rallied and worked very hard to pull this off and get it set up. Our community engagement department and our foundation folks took the lead on it with setting up the logistics.”