Rays held in the court sale before turning the keys to the Tropicana Field for roof repairs

Bill Walsh compared the preparation for the sale of the Tampa Bay Rays' Charity Yard Sale, which took place on Saturday with the spring cleaning of an average household. The many collected objects range from cups to shirts and everything in between. It could be one or two surprises in the form of something that had been forgotten for a long time but had been caused one or two memories.

“Anyone who makes spring cleaning in their house will find things that they didn't know they had,” said Walsh, Chief Business Officer of the Rays. “It's pretty much the same here on another scale.”

Another scale? How about 28 seasons of promotional items and another inventory? Then there were a few articles that were given away fans who were not given away. An example would be a Willy Adames Bobblead, which was to be distributed to Tropicana Field fans on May 30, 2020. Nobody went to baseball games or anything else due to the pandemic. When the season finally started at the end of July, the fans were not allowed to take part.

The Adames Bobble and other objects were added to the advertising plan of the following season. Therefore, on June 9, 2021, the rays terminated the date on which the collector's item would finally be distributed. However, the shortstop was treated to the Brewers on May 21. What to do with all bobbleads? The answer arrived almost four years later when they were available to those who took part in the Rays' Yard Sale on the Trop parking lot.

In a similar way and recent times, the rays should give away a set of three shoe magic to children 14 and on August 11th. The players were Yandy Diaz, Zach Eflin and Josh Lowe. Eflin was treated to Orioles on July 26th. Do you guess which team played the rays that day the article would have given away? In fact, Eflin and his new Team Tampa Bay have hidden over seven innings to win the victory two days earlier. Children finally got the charm at the Yard Sale.

“We have had the chance to focus on everything in all parts of the building in all parts of the building that we have not done in the past 25 years,” said Walsh, Tropicana Field Post-Hurricane Milton and collecting more than 75,000 articles for the public. “Almost every giveaway we had were some left that we found.”

These objects included Bobbleads, Sweatshirts, T-Shirts, Tumbler, Covering and those who refer to group nights such as universities in the state (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 with a table after the table full of articles paid 20 US dollars for a bag that they could overfill. If the bag was full, the fans were able to pay for another $ 20 for each additional bag. The opportunity for garden sales sections in which you consider what someone could go away.

City to take over trop

The city of St. Petersburg announced at the beginning of April that it approved 23 million US dollars for “… the costs for the manufacture, delivery and installation of the roof membrane of PTFE (polytetrafluorethylene).” In other words, the trop receives a new top. Walsh noticed that the hope was that preparatory work would begin with external repairs in mid -June, which may be visible eight weeks afterwards. Against this background, it was time to carry out the massive spring cleaning and then avoid it.

“The creation of this is really the city that takes over the repair of the roof,” said Walsh. “We will be surrounded by the keys of the building to the city for this period. We have to get everything out of our way so that they can work. Hundreds of workers will set up (roof) panels that are in August.”

Therefore, it was time to literally take inventual inventory, which was hidden in storage rooms and other areas of the building and made the objects available to the fans. Several Rays employees made the day with the Rays Baseball Foundation, the non -profit arm of the Ball Club, possible and benefited from the sale.

“Everything came together in three weeks,” said Walsh, joking that the rays were used to doing almost everything in narrow windows this year, including the massive task of preparing Steinbrenner Field for the regular season in a few days. “Many people really gathered and worked very hard to do this and have it set up. Our department for the commitment of the community and our Foundation people took the lead with the establishment of logistics.”