{"id":418601,"date":"2026-10-04T17:46:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T17:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/418601\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T17:46:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T17:46:34","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-alds-game-1-draws-40542-trops-largest-since-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/418601\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 ALDS Game 1 draws 40,542, Trop\u2019s largest since 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-franchises \">The announced crowd of 40,542 in Game 1 of the ALDS in Tampa Bay was the \u201clargest for a postseason game at the Trop since Game 5 of the 2010 ALDS\u201d vs. the Rangers. The Rays hosted its first playoff game following the \u201cextensive repairs to the Trop due to severe damage from Hurricane Milton\u201d in October 2024 and in their first season under new ownership. Rays SS Taylor Walls said the crowd was \u201cabsolutely electric\u201d and he had \u201cnever seen this place like that.\u201d Rays manager Kevin Cash said, \u201cthat\u2019s the best crowd noise I\u2019ve ever witnessed in any ballpark.\u201d He added, \u201cThe atmosphere that was created, the hype before the game, give (new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/09\/21\/rays-ceo-ken-babby-team-will-both-borrow-differ-ideas-from-braves-battery\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/09\/21\/rays-ceo-ken-babby-team-will-both-borrow-differ-ideas-from-braves-battery\/\">Rays CEO Ken Babby<\/a>) and his group an incredible compliment in that we need to create that atmosphere\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/10\/03\/drew-rasmussen-alds-yankees-jonathan-aranda-gerrit-cole-austin-wells-bryan-baker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TAMPA BAY TIMES, 10\/3<\/a>). <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-franchises \">Saturday\u2019s crowd made St. Petersburg \u201clook and sound like it was indeed October\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7656597\/2026\/10\/03\/rays-attendance-playoffs-yankees\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">THE ATHLETIC, 10\/3<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The announced crowd of 40,542 in Game 1 of the ALDS in Tampa Bay was the \u201clargest for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3816,54741,3817,135,137,136,65798],"class_list":["post-418601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baseball","tag-fan-experience","tag-mlb","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-ticketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418601","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=418601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}