Latest news with #BillWalsh
New York Times
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's extension shows Vikings ownership believes in the process
Secrets are buried in books like these. Flip through the pages of 'Building a Champion,' one of Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh's manuals on doing what he and his famed San Francisco 49ers did, and you'll find plenty of gems. Perhaps the most relevant one, in the aftermath of Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah signing a contract extension last week, focuses on the relationship between coaches and members of the front office. Advertisement Their alliance is always a delicate dance. Why? Their interests don't always align. Or, to use Walsh's words, 'each man's priorities can be diametrically opposed.' The general manager must be mindful of the overall economics and the long-term vision. The coach cares about winning — now. Threading the needle between those two worlds causes many situations to crumble. Toss in other factors, like an owner's potential meddling, the stress of losing, one key decision-maker craving public attention or credit over another, and the dynamics get messy quickly. Walsh walks through all of this. Essentially, he is explaining why so many teams fail. Eventually, he reaches two conclusions: 1) Teams hoping to sustain winning operate with continuity. And 2) a team's leadership must be willing to change when something doesn't work. Sounds easy, right? Stick with a plan, but be adaptable. It's that simple. If only ego and pressure didn't exist. Then it would be more common for teams like the Vikings to do what they've done. By extending Adofo-Mensah and keeping the partnership between him and head coach Kevin O'Connell intact, ownership demonstrated its level of commitment to attaining the elusive trophy. Spending on the roster remains flashy. New resources draw attention, too. But keeping the ship moving in the same direction, captained by the same people, is monumental. #Vikings Owner/President Mark Wilf on GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's contract extension — Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) May 30, 2025 'Discontinuity almost always ensures failure,' one former NFL general manager said last spring. 'You keep switching your leadership, and it's counterintuitive. It's not that if you keep the same people, you're necessarily going to be successful. But it's absolutely the case that if you switch people continuously, you will fail. At some point, you have to put your foot in the ground and say, 'I'm going to stick with somebody and stop tinkering, tinkering, tinkering.'' Advertisement Want some proof? OK, how many NFL teams have won 60 percent of their games since 2020? Seven. Who are they? The Chiefs, Bills, Packers, Ravens, Eagles, Buccaneers and Steelers. What do they have in common? Six of the seven have the same general manager now that they had in 2020, and the only one that doesn't (Pittsburgh) made a change when the previous GM retired. Additionally, only the Eagles and Bucs have different head coaches than the ones they began the decade with, and Tampa Bay replaced the former coach with his defensive coordinator. Quarterback play makes a huge difference in the results, but even that subject devolves into a chicken-and-egg conversation. Doesn't the QB have a better chance to thrive if his habitat isn't changing? Doesn't the team have a better chance of picking the correct QB if the team's leadership has experience with developing a consensus? To be clear, time together doesn't mean disagreements will never happen or that no one will ever have opposing views. If anything, the experience of working through those disputes provides a shorthand. Adofo-Mensah knows his scouts. He knows who grades players optimistically, who specializes in particular positions, who seeks to see their evaluations validated. The scouts also understand Adofo-Mensah and why he's going to see players through a historical lens. Adofo-Mensah recognizes the kinds of players defensive coordinator Brian Flores prefers. The coaching staff acknowledges that winning a Super Bowl means parting with the good (Kirk Cousins) in an attempt to find the great (a rookie quarterback offering loads of salary cap space). Working together leads to the types of free-agent classes that earned Adofo-Mensah more time. The Vikings nailed the Za'Darius Smith signing in 2022 and crushed the Byron Murphy Jr. acquisition in 2023. Last year, Minnesota hit the trifecta with Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel and Blake Cashman. The franchise's record is not spotless — looking at you, Marcus Davenport — but the right moves at the right times have created paths for two double-digit-win seasons in three years amid a salary-cap overhaul and quarterback transition. Advertisement Of course, the Vikings wouldn't have needed to be as reliant on free agency if they had more success in the draft. Misses in April cast a pall over Adofo-Mensah's resume. Twenty-three picks since 2022, and only one serious impact player: receiver Jordan Addison. The draft credentials would be more cause for concern, to go back to Walsh's original recipe, if it weren't for Adofo-Mensah's public reflections. 'When a mistake has been made, or a miscalculation has occurred, or a decision doesn't bring the proper results, ego prevents people from admitting error,' Walsh and co-author Glenn Dickey wrote. 'One of the major factors in successful leadership is the willingness to concede a miscalculation or mistake and change course immediately.' At least twice, Adofo-Mensah deferred to analogies to opaquely say he got too cute, tried to do too much. Privately, he has even admitted to focusing more recently on a player's intelligence, aware that O'Connell's and Flores' systems stress the mind. How these different draft priorities affect results in the next couple of seasons will determine whether Adofo-Mensah's early faults can be overcome. The most notable takeaway is that he has that opportunity. The final outcome will almost certainly hinge on J.J. McCarthy's trajectory, which is aimed as well as possible when ownership operates like this.
Forbes
02-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Rays Held Yard Sale Before ‘Turning Over Keys' To Tropicana Field For Roof Repairs
A sampling of the seemingly endless inventory of caps available at the Tampa Bay Rays' yard sale on ... More May 31, 2025. The sale was held in the parking lot of Tropicana Field. Bill Walsh likened the preparation for the Tampa Bay Rays' charity yard sale held Saturday to an average household's spring cleaning. The many items collected range from mugs to shirts and everything in between. In the process, there might a surprise or two in the form of something that had been long forgotten about, but evoked a memory or two. 'Everyone that does spring cleaning in their house, I think they find things they didn't know they had,' said Walsh, the Rays' chief business officer. 'It is pretty much the same here on a different scale.' A different scale? How about 28 seasons worth of promotional items and other inventory. Then there were a few items scheduled to be given away to fans that were, well, not given away. An example would be a Willy Adames bobblehead that was scheduled to be handed out to attending fans at Tropicana Field on May 30, 2020. Nobody was going to baseball games, or doing much of anything else, on that date due to the pandemic. When the season finally began in late July, fans were not permitted to attend. The Adames bobble, and other items, were added to the following season's promotional schedule. Hence, the Rays announced June 9, 2021 would be the date the Adames collectible would finally be handed out. However, the shortstop was dealt to the Brewers on May 21. What to do with all of the bobbleheads? The answer arrived nearly four years later when they were available to those attending the Rays' yard sale in the Trop parking lot. Similarly, and more recently, the Rays were to give away a set of three shoe charms to kids 14 and under last August 11. The players featured were Yandy Diaz, Zach Eflin and Josh Lowe. Eflin was dealt to the Orioles on July 26. Guess which team the Rays played the day the item would have been given away? In fact, Eflin blanked Tampa Bay over seven innings in picking up the win two days earlier with his new team. Kids finally got the charms at the yard sale. 'We have had a chance to put eyes on everything in all parts of the building over the last six months or so in a way that we just haven't in the last 25-plus years,' said Walsh, of scavenging Tropicana Field post-Hurricane Milton and gathering more than 75,000 items for the public to pick through. 'Almost any promotional giveaway we had, there were some left over that we found.' Shoe charms that were to be given away to Rays fans at a game in 2024, but were pulled from the ... More promotional calendar when Zach Eflin was traded before the giveaway date. Such items included bobbleheads, sweatshirts, t-shirts, tumblers, blankets and those related to group nights such as in-state universities (USF Day or UCF Day) and other themed celebrations. The many fans who weathered the rain in St. Petersburg on Saturday morning while waiting to enter two tents that had table after table full of items paid $20 for a bag they could overstuff. When the bag was full, fans could pay another $20 for each additional bag. The opportunity made for yard sale-type bargains considering what someone could walk away with. The city of St. Petersburg announced in early April that it approved $23 million for '…the cost of fabrication, delivery, and installation of PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) roof membrane.' In other words, the Trop will receive a new top. Walsh noted the hope was that prep work would commence in mid-June with exterior repairs visible perhaps eight weeks thereafter. With that in mind, it was time to perform the massive spring cleaning and get out of the way. 'The genesis of this is really the city taking on the repair of the roof,' said Walsh. 'What we are going to do is turn over the keys of the building to the city for that period of time. We need to get everything that is ours out of the way so they can work. There will be hundreds of workers setting up to install (roof) panels, which be in August.' The Tropicana Field parking lot was the sight of a Tampa Bay Rays yard sale May 31, 2025. More than ... More 75,000 items were piled up on tables within two tents. Hence, it was time to get busy with literally taking inventory on what was hiding in storage spaces and other areas of the building and making the items available to fans. Several Rays employees made the day possible with the Rays Baseball Foundation, the ballclub's charitable arm, benefitting from the sale. 'It all came together in three weeks,' said Walsh, somewhat joking the Rays have had to become accustomed to doing most everything in tight windows this year, including the massive chore of getting Steinbrenner Field ready for the regular season in a matter of a few days. 'A lot of folks really rallied and worked very hard to pull this off and get it set up. Our community engagement department and our foundation folks took the lead on it with setting up the logistics.'
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 ChatGPT Prompts To Create Your Internal Scorecard For Career Success
ChatGPT prompts to create your internal scorecard for career success Results deceive you. External validation lies. The charts don't reflect reality fast enough. Most founders anxiously wait for numbers to validate their work. Stripe dashboards. Social media followers. A bank account balance. But champions operate from a different playbook. What if you could guarantee success before any metric shows it? In The Score Takes Care of Itself, legendary football coach Bill Walsh wrote about building a standard so high that outcomes became a by-product. Excellence in, inevitable excellence out. These prompts flip how you measure success, so your business scores take care of themselves. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through. Building unstoppable momentum comes from consistent standards, not occasional brilliance. When I sold my social media agency, our culture of excellence mattered more than any revenue figure. We secured the exit because our standards were elite, regardless of what happened outside our control. The scoreboard follows your inputs. Your outcome becomes automatic when you refuse to accept anything less than your best effort. "Help me create a weekly scoreboard based on my standards of effort, focus, and leadership. First, predict what excellence looks like in each area for me specifically, using what you already know about me. Then, create a scoring system with specific metrics I can track daily and average weekly. Help me connect these standards to my long-term business vision. Ask for more detail if required." When the heat turns up, your true character comes out. Winners maintain their standards regardless of circumstances. Your approach to chaos today predicts your results tomorrow. You can't succeed without tracking how you respond when things go wrong. Your reaction to conflict, pressure and unexpected challenges predicts your future success. "Create a self-review template that tracks how I handled pressure and conflict this week. Include 5 specific questions about how I responded to challenges, maintained my principles under pressure, and treated others during difficult moments. Create a scoring system that helps me quantify my performance in each area. End with a section that asks me to identify one specific situation where I could have responded better, and exactly how I'll handle a similar scenario next time." You can't do everything. You can't be everywhere. Your choices of how to spend your time today define your business success tomorrow. The quality of your decisions determines the trajectory of your business. Average entrepreneurs measure results too late, when they've already missed their opportunity to improve. But everything transforms when you score yourself on how you prioritize, decide and execute each day. Your daily choices compound into your future reality. "Score me on decision-making, priority setting, and consistency based on my actions this week. First, ask me to describe (using voice mode) an important decision I made, how I prioritized my time, and where I was consistent or inconsistent with my standards. Give me a score for each area with specific feedback on what I did well and where I can improve. Provide exact steps to level up in each category next week." You become what you repeatedly do. Each day you either reinforce the identity of a founder who wins or one who struggles. Your daily actions vote for the person you'll become in the future. Typical business owners never connect their habits to their future self. They stay stuck because they reinforce the wrong identity through their choices. "Based on what you know about me through our conversations, as well as the calendar screenshot I will upload, analyze how I spent my last 7 days. What identity am I reinforcing through my actions? Identify 3 patterns in my behavior that align with my goals and 3 that might be creating an identity that works against my success. For each misaligned pattern, suggest a replacement habit that would reinforce the identity of someone who achieves what I want to achieve. Create a daily reminder I can use to keep this identity shift top of mind. [Add screenshot]" Winners don't wing it. They reverse engineer success from a clear vision of championship performance. You can't get extraordinary results from ordinary standards. Moving beyond average means imagining how your future self operates, then bringing that reality into today. Conventional founders plan their day based on current limitations. But everything changes when you schedule as if you're already the founder you aim to become. "What would my day look like if I was living as the founder who always wins in the long term? Based on what you know about my business goals and personal values, create a new detailed schedule for my ideal day. Include both specific activities and the mindset I'd bring to each one. Highlight where this 'future me' day differs from my current patterns, particularly in how I make decisions, interact with others, and maintain my energy. Create 3 specific questionsI can ask myself each morning to step into this identity before I start work." Obsessing over the final result is surplus to requirements. Instead, define your standards. Create metrics for how you show up, and your achievements will take care of themselves. Score your effort and focus daily. Track how you handle pressure and make decisions. Check which identity your actions reinforce. Live from your future self's playbook. Don't be held back by your current limitations. Raise your internal standards and external results follow naturally. Become the type of person who wins before anyone else notices. Play the long game and win every time. Access all my best ChatGPT content prompts.
Forbes
21-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Inside The Tampa Bay Rays' Mad Dash To Reinvent Their Business After A Devastating Hurricane
When Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida in October, peeling the roof off Tropicana Field like a ripe orange, the Tampa Bay Rays were left to scramble to find a stadium for the 2025 season. It ultimately took them just five weeks to announce their new home: Tampa's George M. Steinbrenner Field, a minor league ballpark and the New York Yankees' spring training complex. Then came the real race against the clock. The Rays had four months to get ready for Opening Day—and that meant much more than shipping some bats and balls across the bridge from St. Petersburg or redecorating the players' clubhouse. The team's 300 or so employees, needing a new headquarters, moved to a temporary office space less than a mile from the Trop and got to work rebuilding their ticketing infrastructure and coordinating with Major League Baseball to get Steinbrenner Field ready for national television broadcasts. The Rays would also have to rejigger sponsorships—which, at best, typically take three months to come together, and sometimes years—to fit their new inventory of signage space. They would have to adjust to a new concessions operator, speeding up a process that took them a year and a half the last time they switched vendors, and decide whether they needed trailers or additional cold storage space. They had to figure out how to ship merchandise from their warehouse at the Trop and start planning for kiosks on the stadium concourse to compensate for the smaller footprint of the team stores. And they had to connect with a different city police department and county sheriff's office, plus a new fire inspector. 'It was almost like standing up a new business, frankly, in the span of a few months,' says Bill Walsh, the Rays' chief business officer. 'Whatever the baseball analogy of building the plane while you fly it is, I think, is fair to say.' The sprint to the finish will be next week. The Rays are not permitted to move into Steinbrenner Field until the Yankees move out, leaving only around 120 hours between the end of New York's spring training game on March 23 and the start of Tampa Bay's regular-season opener against the Colorado Rockies on March 28 (a matchup that was pushed back a day to allow for a little extra time). Those five days will be an around-the-clock rush by 50 workers from five companies as well as more than 80 team staff members to mount more than 3,000 signs and other marketing assets—not just corporate logos but also Rays-themed 'see something, say something' and 'watch for foul ball' placards. The giant 'YANKEES' lettering plastered on each side of the stadium will be covered up, the pinstriped merchandise in stores swapped for Tampa Bay blue, and the security screening process ironed out. There will be no avoiding a revenue impact this season as the Rays move from Tropicana Field—which has been configured to hold roughly 25,000 fans since 2018, with 54 luxury suites, and can be expanded to around 42,000—to a 10,046-seat minor league ballpark with 13 suites. That's more bad news for a franchise that ranked 27th (out of 30) on Forbes' 2024 list of MLB's most valuable teams at $1.25 billion, with estimated revenue of $301 million. But the Rays are confident that their busy offseason will minimize the disruption—and even lead to some new money-making opportunities. Home Away From Home: The Rays will spend the 2025 regular season at Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees' spring training complex in Tampa, about 20 miles from their usual headquarters in St. Petersburg. This situation isn't entirely unprecedented for Tampa Bay, which had to shift its spring training home to Orlando in 2023 after its facility in Port Charlotte was damaged by Hurricane Ian. And other pro teams have had to make unexpected moves at the last minute. For instance, Covid-19 travel restrictions forced the Toronto Blue Jays to move for 2020 and parts of 2021 to Buffalo, New York, and Dunedin, Florida, where their minor league affiliates usually play. Fifteen years earlier, the NBA team then known as the New Orleans Hornets and the NFL's Saints temporarily relocated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But that history does little to mitigate the challenge facing the Rays, who learned relatively quickly that 35-year-old Tropicana Field could not be repaired before the end of the 2025 season. Wanting to stay in the region, they struck a deal with the Yankees, reportedly for $15 million, although insurance is believed to be covering at least some of that fee. In a bit of lucky timing, Steinbrenner Field recently completed a two-year renovation, but even so, 'it's not turnkey,' Walsh notes. For instance, more room had to be created to accommodate major league umpires and players' families, and the stadium's lighting had to be improved. Tampa Bay also had to cover the costs of upgrades to a practice field on the property that will now serve as the home of the Class A Tampa Tarpons, Steinbrenner Field's usual summer tenant. In perhaps the most conspicuous change, MLB altered the Rays' schedule to prevent conflicts with the Tarpons and with the NFL's Buccaneers, who play down the street at Raymond James Stadium, and to avoid the rain that tends to drench the region in the summer months. Tampa Bay will play 19 of its first 22 games at home and be on the road for 69 of 103 to end the season. But the Rays, who have played home games under a dome since they made their MLB debut in 1998, also see playing outdoors as a chance to experiment with their business. They expect to add fireworks to their game-day experience and can now sell sponsorship space on the tarp used during rain delays, as well as video-board spots that pass the time until the game can resume. Air conditioning will be a major draw for Steinbrenner Field's suites, and Orlando Health, which became the Rays' official healthcare partner coming out of the pandemic, will place branded sunscreen and hydration stations around the concourse to combat the summer sun. That attitude of turning lemons into lemonade permeates the organization—and occasionally covers other kinds of fruit. 'Our sponsors kind of understood, 'Hey, I'm not going to get an apple, I'm going to get an orange, but I like oranges, too,'' says Walsh, acknowledging that Steinbrenner is a much smaller facility than the Trop to adorn with company logos. While some marquee ad placements—such as the outfield wall or behind home plate—are comparable, other relationships have required a different mix of signage or hospitality offerings, or an accommodation in the form of a deal extension or deferred payment. The Rays have installed LED boards around Steinbrenner to carry more ads, and their sponsorship team also had an all-new perk to dangle thanks to the field's location: signage outside the stadium facing Dale Mabry Highway, one of Tampa's busiest streets. 'Those eyeballs on our brand and impressions are such an easy way for us to prove ROI,' says Orlando Health senior director of sports partnerships Ultima Espino, adding, 'I think I was prepared to be more nimble than I really had to be.' Orlando Health's investment in its sponsorship is roughly flat from last year, and that isn't uncommon across a Rays portfolio that has seen a retention rate perhaps even better than usual. 'Very close to all folks have indicated a path forward to get everything transferred over, and some folks have even stepped up and done more,' Rays vice president of corporate partnerships Anthony Rioles says. 'And for the very few handful of folks that for one reason or another made sense for us to take a slight break this year, it's not full stop—we're keeping the long-term relationship intact.' Tampa Bay had to go through a similarly painstaking process to adapt its ticketing for the 2025 season, starting with reassembling its customer history within management system. The Rays had already completed their season-ticket renewal process by early September, so they had to figure out how to transfer those fans to a new ballpark configuration. 'We sat down in a group of eight or 10 of us—for many, many hours each session—and literally manually moved dots on the map into what we felt would be the most comparable location,' Walsh says. 'And then we invited those folks to view that location and either accept them or decline.' The Rays ranked 28th in MLB with average home attendance of 16,515 last season, but even that relatively small step-down to Steinbrenner Field's capacity would translate to a revenue loss of more than $14 million over a full season, assuming the average ticket price held steady, according to Forbes estimates. The inevitable result of the scarcity: Tickets are more expensive this season. Walsh says it would be too difficult to come up with an average increase—'I think we have 25 or 30 different pricing codes,' he says, and single-game tickets went on sale only recently—but the Tampa Bay Times found one fan whose season package was rising 39%, to $26,325. Despite that jump, the Rays' season-ticket base is larger than it was last season, and 45% of those fans are new this year, Walsh says. Tampa Bay also created new types of partial-season plans and even rethought its strategy around giveaways. For one thing, it is planning to hand out items that could be useful outdoors, such as hats and sunglasses. More importantly, the team is shifting its promotional calendar from a 'peak on peak' model—trying to make attractive matchups even more desirable—to one that emphasizes games that might otherwise be more difficult to sell. Quick Turnaround: During the Rays' first trip to Steinbrenner Field this year, for a spring training game against the Yankees, they were the visitors. Across five days next week, they'll move in as the home team. 'That was another area that was leave no stone unturned,' Walsh says. 'I don't think we coasted on anything, really, in any aspect of the business.' This massive effort may be for just this regular season—but it could be for longer. There has still been no decision made on where Tampa Bay would play postseason games this year, and while the front office is generally operating under the assumption that the Rays will be back at Tropicana Field next season, that future is somewhat uncertain as well. An assessment in November found that the St. Petersburg City Council could repair the Trop for roughly $56 million in time for 2026's opening day, but the Rays, who have been seeking public funding for a new ballpark for years, have voiced complaints that the plan would cover 'only the bare minimum' and indicated that the stadium has sustained additional damage in the months it has remained without a roof. Longer term, the outlook is even murkier. In September, the Rays announced an agreement with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County for a public contribution of roughly $600 million toward a $1.3 billion ballpark to replace Tropicana Field, which is now among MLB's oldest stadiums and widely considered one of the worst major pro sports venues in North America. But after an offseason of sniping between the team and city and county officials—much of it ostensibly over delays in the process and potential cost overruns—the Rays withdrew from the project on March 13. It called to mind an earlier deal for a new stadium in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, which met a similar end in 2018 when Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg abruptly said the plan was no longer viable. (A year later, he made a bizarre proposal to split the season between the Tampa Bay area and Montreal.) In recent days, the Rays have floated the idea of a more significant Tropicana renovation that could extend the ballpark's lifespan by 10 years, although it was immediately met with skepticism by Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg. A permanent solution is clearly a priority for MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who has publicly expressed support for keeping the Rays in the region while saying the team's stadium situation must be solved before the league can fulfill its goal of adding expansion franchises. Last week, the Athletic reported that Manfred and other team owners were pressuring Sternberg to sell the Rays. It's one more hurdle for Tampa Bay's business executives, but few front offices have had as much practice dealing with adversity. 'We have a culture here of embracing opportunity through disruption,' Walsh says. 'That's part of our culture and part of our DNA. The [2025 season] is perhaps a different scale and a different timeline, but the muscle memory for many of us remains similar, and it's just about finding opportunities through the differences.'
Boston Globe
10-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Rays to transform minor league ballpark for major duty in (almost) no time, and Red Sox will be one of first visitors
A metamorphosis that even Statcast can't measure. 'Building the plane while you fly it,' said Bill Walsh, the Rays' chief business officer. 'At times really, really exciting and at times obviously just incredibly frantic and stressful.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Tampa Bay is one of two big league teams whose home games will be in minor league stadiums this year. The Athletics moved to Sutter Park in West Sacramento, Calif., for at least three seasons while a planned structure is built in Las Vegas. Advertisement The Red Sox are scheduled for a three-game series April 14-16 at the 'home' of the Rays. After playing indoors at the Trop in St. Petersburg since the franchise took the field in 1998, the Rays needed a rental after Hurricane Milton tore off the roof panels on Oct 9. Related : Concluding the ballpark couldn't be repaired quickly, Tampa Bay found an office site near the Trop two weeks later and announced a deal on Nov. 14 to play 2025 home games at Steinbrenner Field, These temporary digs will feel like a player palace. A two-year renovation designed by Gensler and executed by Turner Construction Co. transformed the home clubhouse from motel quality to a Four Seasons. Home clubhouse more lavish than most Player and staff space doubled to 50,000 square feet. There is a two-story weight room with floor-to-ceiling windows and garage door, indoor and outdoor stretching areas, a Ping-Pong table, a barbershop, eight beds in a trainers area, massage rooms, and a SwimEx along with hot and cold tubs with TVs at water level, a sauna red-light therapy and four batting cages. Each player locker has a safe along with USB and USB-C ports. There is a 70-seat meeting room, six private offices and 12 desks for additional staff. Advertisement A made-to-order open kitchen is near a 2,400-square foot picnic patio with 18 tables for dining and a long counter. 'I could totally see a wedding,' said Matt Ferry, the Yankees' director of baseball operations. Related : Steinbrenner Field's regular-season team is the Yankees' Class A Tampa Tarpons, who will dress a 1.2-mile drive away at the team's minor league complex across Dale Mabry Highway and play home games on field two, a practice diamond behind Steinbrenner's first-base side. Reminders of Yankees will remain All the other signage is set to change — the new ones would stretch a mile laid side to side. Five companies, 50 installers and at least 80 Rays staff will carry out the conversion. A method will be found to cover the floor tiles leading to the clubhouse bathrooms that spell out: 'The Bronx' and 'New York.' It was unclear whether the Rays can cover wallpaper near the showers meant to create the illusion of scenery viewed from a speeding subway. While the clubhouse is set up for spring training with 51 stalls along the walls circling the room and 28 in the center spread into four pods, the Rays thought it might be too difficult to remove the unneeded spaces in the middle. Advertisement 'We didn't do as much branding as we wanted to do because the Rays are going to cover most of it,' Ferry said. Related : Yankees staff will remain in their fourth-floor offices, but the team will use the cramped visitors' clubhouse on the third-base side when the Rays host New York from April 17-20 and Aug. 19-20. Extra construction is being funded by the Rays. Storms are likely in the summer Absence of a roof figures to be disruptive in an area that had a record 80.29 inches of rain last year, according to the Tampa Bay's schedule was adjusted to have 19 of its first 22 games at home and then 16 of 19 on the road from June 24 to July 13 and 19 of 22 from July 25 to Aug. 17. 'We're going to be playing outdoor baseball in Tampa Bay for the first time ever during the regular season and people have been talking about this for decades,' Walsh said. 'It's kind of in our DNA to be a bit of an agitator and try to find opportunity sort of through challenges and through doing things differently. And this is certainly doing things differently.'
