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 Florida − game time 3:05 p.m. ET Sunday − the Red Sox will hop a plane to New York for their best-of-three wild card series against the Yankees.
While the Red Sox (86-74) have locked in their AL seeding, they could be playing for some World Series home field ramfications against certain NL squads. The Cubs entered Game 2 Friday with an 88-72 record and hold the tiebreaker over both the San Diego Padres (89-70) and Philadelphia Philies (87-72). They could still land on any of the Nos. 1-3 wild card spots, which would mean hosting a three-game series, traveling to the No. 1 wild card or traveling to NL East division champ Atlanta.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cubs vs. Red Sox season finale moved to Florida's Tropicana Field due to storm
