Rays wins the opening day unlike any other with Walk-off Homer in the new outdoor house

Tampa-the baseball had always had to be played on asylum and sunny afternoons, while the crowds roar and the rides at walking house were wrapped through the winds.

Baseball has never been designed to be played at home, in a odd -shaped dome with dangling catwalks with a ceiling and a roof of the same color as the base balls (i.e. white).

I think we know now, after the largest opening of the outdoor house in the story of Tampa Bay Rays. Mother Natura-and a hero of Walk-offs named Kameron Misner-he delivered that strong and clear message on Friday, while the Rays shocked the rocky mountains of the Colorado, 3-2, on an opening day unlike any other.

This day began with the fireworks and a pre -party overpass to George M. Steinbrenner Field, a proud house of non -Yankees (at least this year). It ended with a rocket for Walk-off, from how a shiny Walk-off as unlikely, while you will come across this season. But it was something, okay.

This was the drama. This was baseball. And for a team whose dome is unwanted roof At the moment, this was even better.

This was at home.

“Yes, it looks home,” said Rays José Caballero’s outfielder on Friday, after the first day of opening of the Rays house ever in The Great Outdoors. “As we said, we are trying to take this place as a house. And (the first night) we go out and win a game of ball like this? So is it a little a good start.”

Type?

In no way they could have screnched this better. Cabbage, in no way they could have scripted, point.

Ryan Pepioot rays appetizes in the first inning in front of an announced crowd of 10,046. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)

For the first six inning, the Rays scraped together zero races and only two shots from the appetizer of the Kyle Freeland mountains, a boy who had given up 10 runs The opening day of last year. So the bullpen of the rocky mountains arrived on the scene.

Five jokes later, the rays had scored two points to tie this game. Two inning later, it was the moment of Misner.

Recently Tuesday, he was around Durham, NC, because that’s where the Rays had sent him after a Cutdown of the first spring. But then the Richie Palacios utilityman fractured a finger during a drill. So he opened a place on the roster for Misner’s return.

So in the fifth inning Friday, the right defender Josh Lowe changed an oblique muscle on an oscillation. So this opened a place for Misner to enter this game.

“Things happen,” said Misner, “and you can’t really control them. There are many uncontrollable in baseball. And here I am.”

Here it is, okay. He was 1 in 15 in his life in a great league, with 10 Strikeout. But nothing that had brought him right now counted more, while he intervened to lead the ninth against the Colorado Victor Vodnik lifter. The right arm of the Rocky Mountains tried to sneak a quick ball beyond Misner for a strike for the first shot. No.

Misner dropped the bat of bats. The baseball ball went roaring towards the seats of the field on the right, cutting the pungent winds of 20 mph at 108.1 mph. For eight inning, it seemed practically impossible for any ball to pierce those breezes and transform it into the land of home. So everything he could do was hope, said Misner.

“You never know,” he said. “The wind turned. I knew I hit him quite well. And I was only hoped.”

If they had played in too much, the wind would have turbined exactly at zero miles per hour, unless someone accidentally set the AC at the top. But let’s hear it for outdoor baseball.

While baseball flew through the Tampa sky, Minds ran. Questions danced in the leaders of those they took. Would this ball have enough? Would you finish this game? Would Misner send to the books of stories and the history books?

YES!

We digest how poetic and improbable it was.

First victory for the first walk pic.twitter.com/e2stdkujm3

– Tampa Bay Rays (@raysbaseball) March 28, 2025

• In the history of the Major League Baseball, according to Statists Expect, only a player has never hit a home race for the opening day for his first career Homer. That player is … Kameron Misner.

• But that’s not all. The Rays played baseball in Tropicana Field for 27 seasons. In all those years, only a man had ever hit a Homer traveled on the opening day to Tropo: Carl Crawford, against the Red Sox, 22 years ago. So what were the chances that on their first day of opening through the bay, this would happen?

• Now think of all the Ballpartks who have hosted MLB games in the last and a half century. Would you believe that only three others have ever been the scene of a race at home for their first day of opening? REAL. And one of these was Cors Field, the house of the rocky mountains, in 1995 (by Dante Bichette). The others, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Nationals Park in 2008 (Ryan Zimmerman) and the stadium of the County of Milwaukee in 1953 (Bill Bruton).

“Like a script by Hollywood”: Kameron Misner rounds off the foundations after his home race. (Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)

And then Misner arrived, Friday in Steinbrenner Field, two hours and 19 minutes from his team’s first day in an attempt to understand what to do outdoor baseball.

Seriously? You cannot invent this stuff.

“It was like a script from Hollywood or something like this,” said Rays Ryan PepioT’s appetizer. “You can’t get more electric than that. It was incredible.”

It was so incredible, in fact, that Misner could barely understand him alone. And for a good reason.

According to the baseball reference, this was its appearance of 3,164 ° dish in the main championships, in the minor championships or in college (Missouri). So how many other Did Halk-Off Homer hit 3,163 trips in the plate of home in those previous ones?

“I don’t think I have – anywhere,” he said.

Not even in Little League?

“No, I didn’t reach a race in the home up to the Junior high school,” said Misner.

Well, it is now a 27 -year -old rookie in the big championships. So try to imagine how many other guys had seen a bomb on foot hit and how many times he had found himself shooting from the bench to give up those boys.

Now try to imagine that, practically from nothing, the stars have lined up and that boy was him. While he was on his locker, keeping baseball souvenir at Walk-off, someone had just turned him up, he could barely be able to put that experience in words.

“It is only to the starting point,” he said. “You know, baseball is a fun game. A lot can be fine and a lot can go wrong. Today it went well for me. So it’s a good day.”

But for the rays, this was a great day practically in every imaginable way. First of all, they had their first taste of how strong 10,046 people can play when they are filled in such an intimate baseball field, unlike a dome in which empty seats are more numerous than the encouraging humans.

“Are you an outdoor baseball fan after such a game?” I asked Caballero, who had chosen the alloy race in the seventh inning.

“I’m a baseball fan,” he said. “But I want to say, I am a fan of having a good crowd behind us and feeling like a house. Like last year (to the too much), sometimes it seems to me that it was not so many people. Tonight, it seemed that it was a complete game, as if they were 40,000 people behind us.”

But it was not only that humerus or those encouraging people who were the story on this day. There was also something with which you may be familiar. It’s called time.

“Many things were happening,” said Rays Kevin Cash’s manager. “There was the wind. He had to wear sunglasses for the open of the house. … Shadows, we are not used to that – at home, at least. So yes, there were many differences. But now we can probably make a breath and spend hours talking about it and how we can use it to our advantage.”

Then again, while venturing in a summer of Florida, not all that time will be as mild as it was Friday. So I asked some rays if they have a favorite type of time. The first was their initial launcher of the game 2, Zack Littell.

“Whether you believe it or not, I like the rain,” he said. “As obviously, I don’t want to play baseball in the rain. But I don’t think there is a better feeling, like midsummer, sitting on the rear porch while it rains or at night, only listening to the rain, as a storm or a sweet rolling thunder. I know they are probably the strange man on this.”

The Athletic: “I think you will probably have the opportunity to hear some drops of rain that fall this summer, such as sitting in the shelter, listening to the same sound. But it may not have the same love story as you have just described.”

Littell: “It’s true. And I won’t be able to drink the drink I want to have when I listen to it.”

Ok, then, I asked Rays closest to Pete Fairbanks if you consider “outdoor”.

“I am outdoors,” he said, “in the sense that I play baseball outside. And occasionally golf. And I have a swimming pool in my house, so I can swim with my children. But it’s all.”

Facing: “So are you outdoors when it comes to baseball. Does it mean that you can’t wait for an outdoor baseball season? Or have you been a big fan of the indoor baseball season?”

Fairbanks: “I think every place will have some problems, right? Ours will be warm and humid. But if you go to Kansas City in July and sit in their bullpen, transforms you into a piece of ceramic, because it is a murderer summer. So everything has its challenges.

“I am enthusiastic. In reality, they are both excited and a little upset by the fact that it will not be 72 every day (within the air conditioning too much). But, you know, we can be out. And I can run around and chase a frisbee on his bare feet, that I could not really do in too much. So I imagine that I imagine I am outdoor. “

Pete Fairbanks closest to the outside launched the ninth for the rays. (Kim Klement Neitzel / Image Images)

Well, as everyone remembered them, they have not chosen for these six months. They can wear a golden sunny salt on their uniform. But they have never experienced those sun rays in real life, not on their home territory. Now, however, everything has been turned upside down.

For 27 years they have put the “bay” in the bay of Tampa. Now it is their turn to emphasize the “tampa” in the bay of Tampa, no matter what you bring. The wind. The sun. The shadows. Solar cream. Relentless humidity. The drops of rain that will fall every afternoon, just around the joke tests.

But if most of those days appear like Friday, you will not hear one complaint from any of them. So I asked for cash:

“What is your favorite type of time?”

He caressed his chin and thought for a few seconds. Then he hit him.

“I know,” he replied. “October weather.”

Go deeper

While the rays make Steinbrenner Field their new home, Yankees launched a Ruthian shadow

(Top photo of The Rays Celebing Kameron Misner’s Walk-Off Homer: Chris O’Meara / Associated Press)