From a Roofless Dome to a Bronx Sweep: How the Rays Came Back From Hurricane Milton to Reach the ALCS

On the night of October 9, 2024, Hurricane Milton came ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast and peeled the roof off Tropicana Field like the lid of a can. Anyone who lives around Tampa Bay remembers the video. Shredded fabric flapping in the wind over an empty ballpark. Rain pouring into the seats. A big-league team suddenly without a home.

Two years later, almost to the day, that same team walked off the field at Yankee Stadium with a three-game sweep of the most famous franchise in American sports.

The Rays beat the Yankees 4-3 on Wednesday night in the Bronx to finish off the American League Division Series. They outscored New York 10-5 across three games and held the Yankees to a .135 batting average. Now they are four wins from the World Series and eight from the first championship in franchise history. For a team that was playing in a 10,000-seat spring training park last summer and was picked to finish last this spring, that is about as good a sports story as you will find this fall.

The Night the Roof Came Off

To understand why this run means so much around here, you have to go back to Milton. According to reporting on the rebuild, strong winds tore sections of the original roof, and rain flooded the seating bowl for months. Water caused mold and damaged the electrical, sound and broadcast systems. The dome the Rays had called home since 1998 was, for the moment, unusable.

The city of St. Petersburg owns the building and was on the hook for repairs under its contract with the team. The council authorized nearly $60 million for the work. As of late 2025, insurance had reimbursed only about $7.7 million, according to WUSF, and the city was seeking more money from FEMA.

The new roof went on piece by piece. Twenty-four panels, each weighing about 5,000 pounds and covering about 15,000 square feet. The last one was set in place on November 20, 2025, ahead of schedule.

A Season in Exile

In the meantime, the Rays needed somewhere to play. In November 2024 they announced they would spend the 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. If that name sounds familiar, it should. It is the spring training home of the New York Yankees.

So for a full season, a big-league club played its home games in its biggest rival’s spring ballpark, a ballpark that holds about 10,000 fans. It made the Rays the first major league team temporarily pushed out of its home stadium since the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays. On the field, it did not go well. Tampa Bay finished 77-85, fourth in the AL East and 17 games behind first-place Toronto.

Off the field, the franchise was changing too. In September 2025, longtime owner Stuart Sternberg, who had held majority control since 2005, agreed to sell to a group led by Florida homebuilder Patrick Zalupski. And in August of this year, Hillsborough County approved funding for a proposed new stadium in Tampa, set to open for the 2029 season.

Coming Home

The Rays came back to Tropicana Field for their home opener on April 6, 2026, against the Chicago Cubs, about 18 months after their last game there. The place was sold out.

“I think guys are excited, and rightfully so,” manager Kevin Cash said before that first game back.

Nobody outside the clubhouse expected much. The Rays were picked to finish last in the American League East. Instead, they spent much of the season sitting on top of the entire American League. They were the first team in baseball to clinch a playoff spot, doing it on September 11, the same night third baseman Junior Caminero hit a walk-off, two-run homer against Houston. Eleven days later they clinched the division with a 6-1 win over the Yankees in the Bronx. It was their first AL East title since 2021 and the fifth in franchise history.

A few key moves helped. The front office traded for starter Freddy Peralta from the Mets on August 2. Closer Bryan Baker piled up 41 saves. And Drew Rasmussen turned into an ace, posting a 16-5 record in the regular season.

Game 1: A One-Hitter at the Trop

The series opened Saturday, October 3, in St. Petersburg, and Rasmussen set the tone right away. He carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning and did not give up a hit until there were two outs in that frame. He finished with eight innings, ten strikeouts and two walks, throwing 69 of his 101 pitches for strikes. Baker closed out the ninth.

The only run came from Jonathan Aranda, who drove a 2-2 changeup from Yankees ace Gerrit Cole into the right-center field seats. It was Aranda’s first career postseason hit. Rays 1, Yankees 0, a one-hitter in a dome that did not have a roof the last time October baseball came around.

Game 2: Four Errors and a Fifth-Inning Breakout

Monday’s Game 2 was less about Rays brilliance and more about Yankees mistakes, at least at first. New York committed four errors, three of them in the first inning, which, according to OutKick, made it only the fifth postseason game in Yankees history with four or more errors.

Ben Rice kept the Yankees close with a solo home run in the fourth off Peralta, and he hit another in the eighth. But Tampa Bay broke the game open in the fifth with an RBI groundout from Liam Hicks, an RBI infield single from Chandler Simpson and a two-run single from Richie Palacios. The Yankees loaded the bases in the fifth and came away with nothing when Cody Bellinger flew out to the warning track against reliever Cam Booser. Final: Rays 5, Yankees 2.

Game 3: Mesa’s Blast and a Call Yankees Fans Will Argue About

Wednesday night in the Bronx had everything. Ryan Vilade, playing in his first postseason game, hit a solo homer off Max Fried in the fourth. In the sixth, Victor Mesa Jr. launched a tiebreaking two-run homer that put Tampa Bay ahead for good.

Then came the moment that will be replayed all winter. With two outs, a runner on first and the Yankees down 4-2 in the sixth, Anthony Volpe lifted a fly ball to left that was first ruled a game-tying home run. After a long crew chief review, umpires ruled that fans had reached into the field of play and grabbed for the ball. Volpe was sent back to second with a double, and the runner, George Lombard Jr., was allowed to score. Instead of a tie, it was 4-3.

Cash argued the call even though it went partly his way. Yankees fans will point out that a fan helped them in the 1996 Jeffrey Maier game and hurt them this time. Fair enough. The bigger story is that the Rays’ bullpen held from there. Nick Martinez got 11 outs, and Ian Seymour, Griffin Jax, Booser, Kevin Kelly and Baker finished it. Baker earned the save in all three games.

“We’re loving it, man. We want to keep going,” Martinez said afterward, according to MLB.com.

What the Sweep Means

The history here is real. This is the Rays’ third trip to the ALCS. The first two, in 2008 and 2020, both carried them to the World Series. It is their first series win since they beat Houston in the 2020 ALCS, and it ends a stretch of early exits, including the 2021 ALDS and Wild Card losses in 2022 and 2023.

For the Yankees, it is another October that ends without a title. New York has not won the World Series since 2009, and this season ended with a lineup that scored five runs in three games.

The fair-minded take is that the Yankees did not just lose this series. The Rays took it. Their pitching staff allowed 12 hits in 89 at-bats. And they did it with a roster built largely through player development and smart trades.

What Comes Next

The ALCS opens Monday at Tropicana Field. The Rays will face the winner of the Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox series, which Chicago led two games to one heading into Game 4. If it is the White Sox, the matchup will feature two of the best turnaround stories in the sport. We broke down Chicago’s climb in From 121 Losses to the ALDS.

Asked whether anything changes now, Cash kept it simple: “The exact same.” That has been the Rays’ approach all season, and it is hard to argue with.

For folks along the Gulf Coast who spent the fall of 2024 cleaning up after Helene and Milton, this team carries a little extra weight. People here watched their own roofs come off. They know what it means to rebuild. Seeing the home team come all the way back, under a new roof, and walk out of Yankee Stadium with a sweep is the kind of feel-good story sports does better than anything else. Like the underdog we celebrated in Fat Bear Week, sometimes the one nobody picked ends up on top.

Eight more wins. Nobody in St. Pete is thinking about anything else.