Assessing Raymond James Stadium as a temporary home venue

Let me first say right off the bat that I do not believe that this option will be seriously considered by the Rays and MLB. That said, I’ve seen Raymond James Stadium tossed around on social media as a potential temporary solution to the team’s current situation. After all, it’s very recently updated stadium that’s hosted massive events like the Super Bowl, and the seating capacity is more than enough for any MLB team. Besides, baseball and football teams used to share stadiums all the time! However, those stadiums were built with both sports in mind, and most had moveable seating to accommodate the two different field shapes.

The two most notable instances of a baseball team playing on a rectangular field are the Los Angeles Coliseum, temporary home of the relocated Dodgers, and the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, former permanent home of the Giants and later a temporary venue for the Mets. In the interest of covering all of the bases (no pun intended), let’s look at both of these in the context of RayJay.

The Los Angeles Coliseum hosted the Dodgers for a few years while Dodger Stadium was being built. This proved to be a bit tricky as the stadium was built for track and field-style athletics, which came in handy when it hosted the 1932 Olympics, and then later when it became host of various college and professional football teams. When the Dodgers came to play there, they were forced to erect a massive 42’ tall net in left field to compensate for the short 251’ and 320’ dimensions of left and left center field respectively. (In comparison, the Green Monster at Fenway Park is only 37’ tall.) This still resulted in many home runs hit to left field, until pitchers began to compensate by throwing outside to right-handed hitters.

The Polo Grounds was the home of the Giants from 1891 to 1957, the Yankees from 1913 to 1922, and the Mets in 1962 and 1963. It was actually the third stadium to bear that name, and as the name suggests, it was built primarily to host polo, and thus, it has a bathtub-like shape that was unusual for baseball. Because of this, the left field foul pole was only 279’ from home plate, and the right field foul pole was even closer at 258’. This also resulted in center field being a whopping 483’ away.

Neither of these were ideal for baseball, and is arguable which of the two was the better solution. But either one could be applied to Raymond James Stadium.

The Coliseum approach would end up looking like this. By my tough estimates, that puts the left field foul pole at approximately 250’. On the other hand, the Polo Grounds layout looks like this, giving us about 180’ down the lines, 365’ at straightaway center, and most importantly, about 470’ to land a homer on the pirate ship.

All that said, while I think it absolutely could be done, I don’t know that MLB would ever let a team, even one in the unique and desperate circumstances that the Rays are in, play three full seasons in a stadium with either of these layouts today. Though I must admit, it is fun to dream about it.