{"id":220436,"date":"2026-04-06T12:29:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/220436\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T12:29:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:29:22","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-set-for-tropicana-field-return-monday-in-front-of-sold-out-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/220436\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays set for Tropicana Field return Monday in front of sold-out crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/EL6C7MNICRW7XHQLZFBISLR3E4.jpg\"  width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Monday \u201cfigures to be a festive and emotional day\u201d as the Rays return to Tropicana Field for their first game since the damage caused by Hurricane Milton in October 2024. GETTY IMAGES <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-facilities \">Monday \u201cfigures to be a festive and emotional day\u201d as the Rays return to Tropicana Field for their first game since the damage caused by Hurricane Milton in October 2024. And there \u201cwill be a full house of some 25,000 fans there to see it,\u201d as the team announced on Saturday that the game is officially sold out. This is the 20th straight season, not counting the 2020 COVID season when fans were not allowed, that the Rays have sold out their home opener (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/04\/04\/home-opener-sellout-cubs-tropicana-field-reopening-parking-tickets-giveaway\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TAMPA BAY TIMES, 4\/4<\/a>). Country music artist Eric Church will \u201cperform the national anthem,\u201d and \u201cin a nod to the Rays\u2019 current and hopeful future home,\u201d they will have first pitches by both St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. Members of the crew that \u201crepaired the Trop and team staff will be acknowledged with their participation in the flag unfurling ceremony\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/04\/05\/eric-church-national-anthem-home-opener-tropicana-field-pregame-festivities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/04\/05\/eric-church-national-anthem-home-opener-tropicana-field-pregame-festivities\/\">TAMPA BAY TIMES, 4\/5<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-facilities \">See also: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday \u201cfigures to be a festive and emotional day\u201d as the Rays return to Tropicana Field for their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3816,3817,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-220436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}