Stadium
The Rowdies' home pitch is Al Lang Stadium at Progress Energy Park, a 7,227 seat baseball stadium located on the downtown waterfront of St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rowdies are the only regular tenant of the stadium, so the playing surface was converted for soccer use by removing the pitcher's mound and replacing the infield dirt with grass.
During its inaugural season in 2010, FC Tampa Bay played at George M. Steinbrenner Field, an 11,000-seat baseball stadium in Tampa. The club shared the facility with the Tampa Yankees, the Class A-Advanced affiliate of the New York Yankees, which presented some difficulties. Since the pitcher's mound and infield dirt could not be altered, the soccer field ran across the outfield grass, creating a playing surface smaller than most professional soccer fields. Still, some of the clay baseball diamond bowed out into the soccer pitch. Also, since the Tampa Yankees play several games every week during the summer, scheduling was an issue.
On September 12, 2012, the team announced that they would continue to play at Al Lang Stadium for a further four years and also will change the field configuration and seating arrangements.
Read more about this topic: Tampa Bay Rowdies
Famous quotes containing the word stadium:
“The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“It’s no accident that of all the monuments left of the Greco- Roman culture the biggest is the ballpark, the Colosseum, the Yankee Stadium of ancient times.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“In their eyes I have seen
the pin men of madness in marathon trim
race round the track of the stadium pupil.”
—Patricia K. Page (b. 1916)