After playing a pair of games at Fenway Park Friday, Sept. 25, the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox will pack their bags and beat a hasty path out of Beantown to the warm embrace of climate control.
Hello, St. Petersburg, Florida.
Both playoff-bound clubs will finish their regular seasons in a most unexpected place − Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. That contingency edged closer to reality as a nasty Nor'easter is expected to pummel the Northeast this weekend, prompting the clubs to move Saturday's game to a Friday doubleheader at Fenway.
The Sunday finale was a wait-and-see situation − but Major League Baseball had seen enough by Friday afternoon and moved the game before the weather turned.
It is a somewhat ironic twist: Tropicana Field was rendered unplayable by a hurricane in October 2024, prompting the Rays to play their 2025 home schedule at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. This time, the Trop will provide a safe haven for the Cubs and Red Sox, who each have little at stake.
The Red Sox locked themselves into the No. 5 seed in the American League playoffs by beating the Cubs 4-3 in Game 1 of Friday's doubleheader. That means once the teams contest Game 162 in central F...