PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — It’s hard to get more picturesque than how Charlotte Sports Park looked Tuesday afternoon in Port Charlotte.

What You Need To Know

  • Erik Neander and Kevin Cash held a news conference in Port Charlotte ahead of the start of Spring Training for the Tampa Bay Rays

  • Both Neander and Cash answered numerous questions related to Tropicana Field and the damage it suffered from Hurricane Milton

  • When asked about playing at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Neander reiterated that it was the best fit for the organization to play this year and they're excited that fans in Tampa will have a shorter drive to see the organizations

  • SEE ALSO: After an event-filled offseason, Spring Training set to return Rays to the field

The Rays spring training home is perfectly manicured and ready for baseball, which makes the lead-up to this season even more bizarre.

“It was certainly a unique offseason to certainly start, because so many families, friends were impacted by the storms,” said Manager for the Tampa Bay Rays Kevin Cash.

Cash remembers the drive to Tropicana Field after Hurricane Milton, and at the time it left him speechless.

“It was, you know, surreal,” he said. “And I saw it happen in the middle of the night. I didn’t think it was real.”

The storm tore the roof off the Rays home, damaging the inside and leaving an uncertain future for his team on where they’d play this season.

It was just last week that the Tampa Bay Times reported Stu Sternberg, owner of the Rays, said the future of the organization’s home is murky.

Spectrum News has been following the Tropicana Field stadium saga for months now as the city of St. Pete initially rejected immediate repairs to the facility, which led to a contentious exchange between the city and the organization with the baseball staff stuck in the middle.

“The roof was covering our offices,” said Erik Neander, general manager and president of baseball operations for the Rays, “and just walking through and the ceiling tiles washed out and offices around the fourth floor, there’s two levels above and somehow you can see sky.”

With pitchers and catchers holding their first workouts Wednesday, hope springs eternal in Port Charlotte even with that uncertain future on where the Rays will play after this year.

Through it all, Neander is still optimistic.

“We’ve had different types of uncertainty and questions hanging over our franchise for the entirety of the Rays era and we found a way to win the third most games in baseball and appear in a couple World Series,” he said.

What’s certain this year is that they won’t have games indoors in 72-degree A/C, the players will be playing home games outside in Tampa at Steinbrenner Field with the Florida rain and humidity.

“They’re very aware,” Cash said of his players preparing for the outdoor games in Tampa. “I think they’ve done a lot of work this offseason having that in the back of their mind. We’ve probably thrown more outdoor bullpens this year coming into camp than maybe we have in the past.”

Even amidst all the discussions in the offseason about where the team will be playing and the future of the Trop, spring is now here, so Cash and Neander are doing everything they can to try to focus on baseball.

“The Bay area is where we wanted to be,” Cash said. “That’s our fan base. So, some of our St. Pete locals, I understand it’s frustrating, but for the bay area, to bring baseball over there [in Tampa] and to play during the summer, after the Yankees leave from spring training, I think it’s going to be very exciting.”

Even without any new updates on the situation regarding the Trop’s future, Neander reiterated that Steinbrenner was the best option for the club to play their home games this season.

They are hopeful they’ll be able to get back to the Trop to play as soon as possible.