The Rays Are in the World Series. Here Are 12 Things You May Not Know About Them

The Tampa Bay Rays beat Cleveland 7-3 on Monday night in Game 6 of the ALCS, in a building that spent all of last season without a roof. Junior Caminero's 2-run homer off the left-field foul pole in the seventh put them ahead. Yandy Díaz's 2-run shot in the eighth put it away. Freddy Peralta held the Guardians to 1 run over 5 1/3 innings and was named the series MVP, which is worth remembering this week, because Peralta spent the first 8 years of his career as a Milwaukee Brewer. The Rays got him from the Mets 1 day before the trade deadline.

The Rays won 98 games, took the AL East, swept the Yankees in the Division Series and came back from 2-1 down against Cleveland. It is the third pennant in the history of a franchise that has existed since 1998, and Game 1 of the World Series is Friday, Oct. 23, in Milwaukee. Neither team has ever won it.

Here are 12 things about the Rays that even a lot of baseball fans don't know, counting down to the one that matters most this week.

12. The stadium was built 8 years before the team existed

The Florida Suncoast Dome opened in St. Petersburg on March 3, 1990, with a 1,400-piece marching band, a Kenny Rogers concert, a crowd of 25,339 and no tenant. The city had spent $130 million on a bet: build the ballpark, and a team will come.

For most of a decade, it almost worked. In 1988 the Chicago White Sox came within minutes of moving in. The Illinois legislature had until midnight on June 30 to approve money for a new Comiskey Park, and House Speaker Michael Madigan had the clock stopped so the vote could be taken a few minutes after the deadline. The bill passed 60-55. In November 1992 the San Francisco Giants agreed to sell to a Tampa Bay group led by Vince Naimoli for $115 million, and National League owners voted the sale down, 9-4. The St. Petersburg Times counted it as the seventh time Tampa Bay had struck out. The Mariners, Twins and Rangers all used the city as leverage in their own stadium fights.

In between, the building was the ThunderDome, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning for 3 NHL seasons. On April 23, 1996, the Lightning drew 28,183 for a playoff game against Philadelphia. Thirty years later, it is still the largest crowd in NHL playoff history.

11. The first game was an 11-6 loss, and Wade Boggs hit the first home run

Baseball finally awarded Tampa Bay a franchise on March 9, 1995, alongside Phoenix, for a $130 million fee. The Devil Rays played their first game on March 31, 1998, in front of 45,369 at what was now Tropicana Field, and lost to Detroit 11-6. Wilson Alvarez threw the first pitch, a ball. Wade Boggs, who grew up in Tampa and had been signed to give the team a local face, hit a 2-run homer off Justin Thompson in the sixth, the first home run in franchise history.

The team finished 63-99. It would be 10 years before it had a winning season.

10. Boggs got his 3,000th hit as a Devil Ray, and it was a home run

On Aug. 7, 1999, Boggs hit a home run off Cleveland's Chris Haney at Tropicana Field for his 3,000th hit. Nobody had ever reached 3,000 with a homer. He rounded the bases, dropped to his knees and kissed home plate.

Boggs retired after that season, and the Rays retired his No. 12 the following April, the first number the franchise ever retired. For years there was a story that his Tampa Bay contract required a Devil Rays logo on his Hall of Fame plaque. Boggs has always called it a myth, and when he was inducted in 2005 the plaque showed him in a Red Sox cap.

The Rays have 2 Hall of Famers who played for them, Boggs and Fred McGriff, and neither one wears the team's cap in Cooperstown. McGriff, another Tampa product who spent 5 seasons with the Devil Rays, went in with no logo at all.

9. The "Hit Show" lost 92 games

Before the 2000 season, the Devil Rays decided to buy respectability with power. They signed Greg Vaughn, who had hit 45 homers for Cincinnati, and Vinny Castilla, who had hit 33 for Colorado, and put them in a lineup with Jose Canseco and McGriff. The marketing department called it the Hit Show.

The Hit Show went 69-92 and finished last. Canseco was gone on a waiver claim by August. Castilla hit .208.

8. They traded for a manager

When the Devil Rays wanted Lou Piniella in the fall of 2002, he still had a year left on his contract in Seattle. So they paid for him. The Mariners let Piniella go in exchange for outfielder Randy Winn, who had just made the All-Star team, and sent back an infield prospect named Antonio Perez.

Piniella, a Tampa native, lasted 3 losing seasons. He left after 2005, and the Rays replaced him with a 51-year-old Angels bench coach who had never managed in the big leagues, Joe Maddon.

7. They dropped the "Devil" and went from worst to first

On Nov. 8, 2007, after a 66-96 season that was the worst in baseball, the team announced it was dropping the "Devil" from its name. The new Rays would be named for a ray of sunshine. The fish survived as a sleeve patch.

The next season they went 97-65, won the American League East over the Yankees and Red Sox, beat Boston in Game 7 of the ALCS and went to the World Series. It was the first winning season in franchise history, after 10 straight losing ones. They lost to the Phillies in 5 games.

Maddon's slogan that spring was "9=8": 9 players playing hard for 9 innings equals 1 of the 8 playoff spots. He said he came up with it on a bike ride.

6. Game 162

On the last night of the 2011 regular season, Sept. 28, the Rays trailed the Yankees 7-0 going to the bottom of the eighth at Tropicana Field. They needed a win and a Red Sox loss to take the wild card. They had been 9 games behind Boston on Sept. 2.

They scored 6 in the eighth, 3 of them on an Evan Longoria homer. With 2 outs in the ninth and the count at 2 strikes, Dan Johnson, a pinch hitter who had spent most of the year in Triple-A, hit a home run just inside the right-field foul pole off Cory Wade to tie it.

In Baltimore, the Orioles scored twice in the ninth off Jonathan Papelbon and beat the Red Sox at 12:02 a.m. Three minutes later, Longoria hit a line drive off Scott Proctor that just cleared the short wall by the left-field foul pole, and the Rays were in the playoffs.

5. The opener

On May 19, 2018, the Rays started Sergio Romo, a 35-year-old relief pitcher who had never started a game, against the Angels. He struck out Zack Cozart, Mike Trout and Justin Upton and left. Ryan Yarbrough came in and threw 6 scoreless innings. Romo started again the next night.

The idea was to use a reliever against the top of the lineup in the first inning, then hand the game to a pitcher who would normally have started it. Baseball people laughed for about a month. Within 2 years, half the league was doing it, and the Rays had put a word into the language.

4. There is a tank of live rays in the outfield, and the roof is in play

Since 2006, a 35-foot, 10,000-gallon tank beyond the right-center field fence has held live cownose rays that fans can touch before the game. Seven of them rode out Hurricane Milton in the tank in October 2024, spent 2025 at the Florida Aquarium and a manatee viewing center, and came back for the 2026 home opener.

The tank is the second-strangest thing about Tropicana Field. The strangest is the roof. Four catwalk rings hang from it, and they are in play. A fair ball that hits either of the 2 lower rings is a home run. A fair ball that hits either of the 2 upper rings is live: if a fielder catches it, the batter is out. In Game 2 of this year's Division Series, Yankees rookie Spencer Jones hit a towering fly ball that struck a catwalk and came down into Victor Mesa Jr.'s glove in center field. Replay confirmed the out.

3. They tried to split the team with Montreal

In June 2019, with permission from Major League Baseball, the Rays announced a plan to play the first part of each season in Tampa Bay and the rest in Montreal, in 2 new open-air ballparks. They worked on it for 2 1/2 years. In January 2022, commissioner Rob Manfred told Stuart Sternberg the idea was dead. Sternberg called the news "flat-out deflating."

2. They lost their roof and played a season outdoors

Hurricane Milton came ashore south of Tampa Bay on Oct. 9, 2024, and tore 18 of the 24 fabric panels off the Tropicana Field roof. The Rays played the entire 2025 season across the bay at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees' spring-training park in Tampa, outdoors, in the Florida summer, in front of a capacity of 10,046, the smallest in the majors. They sold out 61 of 81 games anyway.

St. Petersburg spent about $60 million on a new roof, and the Rays came home on April 6, 2026, and beat the Cubs. Everything else changed while they were gone. The $1.3 billion ballpark deal next door collapsed in March 2025. Sternberg sold the team in September 2025 to a group led by Jacksonville developer Patrick Zalupski, for a reported $1.7 billion. And in August 2026 the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County approved a $2.3 billion ballpark across the street from Raymond James Stadium, with an opening targeted for 2029.

So the Rays are playing this World Series in a building that was built for them 8 years before they existed, and that they are planning to leave.

1. They have never won it, and neither have the Brewers

The Rays' 2 trips ended in 5 games against the Phillies in 2008 and 6 against the Dodgers in 2020, in a quarter-full neutral park in Texas. That was the series where Kevin Cash took Blake Snell out in the sixth inning of Game 6 with a 1-0 lead, 9 strikeouts and 73 pitches thrown. The Dodgers scored 2 runs before the inning was over.

Cash is still the manager, 6 years later. This World Series guarantees a first-time champion, the first time that has been true since the Phillies beat the Royals in 1980. One of these 2 franchises is going to stop hearing about it by Halloween.

Which of these surprised you most? Let us know in the comments.