Tampa – The Yankees entered a Thorsday family building for an unknown task: play a game he told.
That was only the tip of the iceberg in the strangeness of playing a regular season series at its spring training house, George M. Steinbrenner Field, which now belongs to the Rays for this season after Hurricane started the Tropicana field last October.
There was also the fact that the Yankees entered the narrow Visitor Club without access to the most spacious house club or all the new facilities and comforts beyond that they underwent a review the last season.
There was a completely new signaling anywhere where a Yankees logo had the leg, with family banks of “Yankees” for each baseline replaced by “rays”, with a logo and two ads at any end.
There was only a new son of land in the painting that was more in line with the game surface in Tropicana Field than what the Yankees played throughout the spring.
“It has been quite strange, honestly,” said Manager Aaron Boone from the visitors’s bench, on the way from his regular position each spring and before the victory of the Yankees 6-3. “I don’t know if surreal is the right word, but it’s definitely a bit strange. I’m sure once the game starts, looking at the stadium,” Oh, it’s real. It is a real game. “But we will be ready to start.”
There was, or of course, a certain familiarity. The statue of George Steinbrenner on the outskirts of the stadium remained intact.
The dimensions of the field still reflected the Yankee Stadium. Hal Steinbrenner still has its suite here.
But inside the homemade Club house, where the Yankees have just spent six weeks of spring training, Shane Baz resides in the locker of the corner of Aaron Judge, Junior Caminero had Giancarlo Stanton and Shane McClanahan Tok about Gerrit Cole’s.
There was a new fishing shelf on the wall between what were the boxes of Cole and Carlos Rodon, a dart board along the way, a rotating mannequin that looks the uniform the rays used by Thorsday and a canvas of the rays that cover the giant Yankees.
“An act of God and Mother Nature was needed to put us in this situation,” said Rays Drew Rasmussen’s right. “We are gratified and grateful to [the Yankees]which is something curious to say, to allow us to use the installation. But also, as regards this regular season, this is our home, not yours. Then they have the opportunity to use each spring. He has Steinbrenner written in the stadium itself, but they have given us permission to call this home, and that is what we are doing. “
Boone described the Yankees who open the doors to Steinbrenner Field to the Rays, who are paying the Yankees $ 15 million for the accommodation, as “the right thing on all fronts”, given what happened to Tropicana Field.
But it also cools the rays an update of the facilities behind the scene they had in the leg in their old house.
“Much more striking, much newer,” said former Yankee and the current Rays Ben Rortvedt receiver. “We are extremely grateful and super slippery that worked here. The facilities are definitely more pleasant and updated, so there are things here that we probably did not.
Multiple rays mentioned how pleasant it was to be able to see the sun in its new excavations, either in the outdoor gym, the cafeteria with outdoor seats or latest generation training room with large windows.
“We can really look outside and see what time it is,” said Rortvedt.
Boone also left a note to Rays Kevin Cash’s manager at the Office of the Origin Manager, and on Thursday he sent him a bottle of tequila as a late inauguration gift of the house.
But once the game begged Thorsday Night, the subtleties and the rarity of the situation were expected to dissipate, with four real games they had in the classification that will take place.
“Have that as spring training [facility] Now it’s really incredible, and boys really play this year, “said Boone.” But your mind changes to, once you leave, we know we are in the season. We know what was expected. “