What’s the saying? “Someday these will be the good old days.” That was either Jean-Paul Sartre or Kesha.

We didn’t know we were in the good old days before Hurricane Milton ripped the roof off Tropicana Field: crispy cool in air conditioning, safe from summer storms, screaming for Ji-man Choi and his Pomeranians. We didn’t know how good we had it before summer baseball involved words that rhyme with wamp grass.

I catch about four Tampa Bay Rays games per season as part of a ticket pool, and my first arrived Thursday at the Rays’ temporary home of George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. The lowlights were a listless loss to the Orioles and a truly terrifying moment when Rays reliever Hunter Bigge was hit by a ball and taken to the hospital.

Also: the heat. “Wait,” dads everywhere are saying. “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” And Steinbrenner, unfortunately, feels like a bowl of bisque bubbling in a microwave.

The Rays are lucky to have this setup in an emergency, and no one expects conditions to be perfect. In fact, nothing has been ideal for this franchise in a long time. On the business end, each day brings a new spate of Montgomery Burns twirling whalebone walking sticks in a protracted fight over who gets to claim the team.

Where will they play next? The way things have been going, we could be watching the Buttzville, New Jersey Rays play on a borrowed Fubo account, wistful for this scorching summer.

A fan holds up a sign that says Rays are hotter than a Florida summer before the start of the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles at Steinbrenner Field on Thursday, June 19, 2025 in Tampa.A fan holds up a sign that says Rays are hotter than a Florida summer before the start of the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles at Steinbrenner Field on Thursday, June 19, 2025 in Tampa. [ LUIS SANTANA | Times ]

And, hey, maybe you love it outside. A contingent of true believers maintain the sport is more authentic in open air. Generally, I can agree. My baseball-obsessed spouse and I have been to Citi Field for the Mets, Wrigley Field for the Cubs, Progressive Field for the Guardians, all offering blissful, breezy doses of Americana. Even Florida’s cherished spring training is mild compared to the armpit months.

But in June, July, August and September, babes, we can’t. That’s final judgment time. That’s cloven-hoof beast time. If the Rays figure out how to stay in Tampa Bay and build a new stadium, please, give me that delicious roof. Give me fluorescent light. Give me that cold, soulless brick and another White Claw, black cherry or bust!

Not to be a complete bummy-pants. Thursday’s clouds were wispy and picturesque. A rainstorm fell at the perfect time to keep the game on schedule and cool the air a few degrees. But I wait in pale terror for our day game in late July. And mostly — never thought I’d say this — I miss the Trop.

It is human nature to lionize the dead, to overlook cousin Gary’s penchant for a five-finger discount and speak only of his “free spirit.” In that essence of eulogy, let’s just say the Trop lit up a room. The Trop never met a stranger. The Trop would give the shirt off her back, which she literally did.

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I formally apologize for every insult I ever lobbed at the would-be convention center, a dome whose aura I compared to a Home Depot. The lights flickered and the roof leaked? The stingray tank was melancholy and unsettling? The seats were, you know, empty? The footlong tater tot had an undesirable sog?

Boohoo! In hindsight, that stadium was a palace of leisure. It was Dante’s Paradiso with a pleasing eau de bleach. Now we prideful fans get to watch the home team play inside a boiling mug while gray cotton T-shirts fight for their lives.

I realize that by insulting Steinbrenner Field, a new natural disaster may drop from the sky and smite it. I’ll be writing an apology to yet another field, wishing we could be together again clanging cowbells and cheering for Stinger to win the mascot race for once in his flappy little life. Someday these may be the good old days, but those moments are hard to see through the steam.

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