It’s been rumored for several days, but now it’s official: Game 162 for both the Cubs and Red Sox will be played Sunday afternoon at 2:05 p.m. Central time at the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The Red Sox had already moved Sunday’s scheduled game to Friday afternoon, where the teams played at Fenway Park and the Red Sox won 4-3. So technically this is Saturday’s scheduled game, moved to the Trop and it will be played at the same time all the other Sunday games
will take place, in the 3 p.m. Eastern time hour.
The teams got lucky that the nor’easter that is going to make a washout of the Boston-area weekend held up long enough for them to play two games at Fenway Park on Friday. Honestly, they should have just moved the entire series to Florida — this forced the Cubs to take flights on consecutive days. The teams were given Saturday off because their flights from Boston were both scheduled to arrive at the Clearwater airport well after midnight. (MLB teams going to play the Rays generally fly to Clearwater and stay in that area as it’s closer to the Trop than the Tampa airport is.)
If you’re in the Tampa Bay area and want to go to this game, you can buy tickets at this link.
Thus the Cubs will have a rare off day Saturday. I’ll have some content posted here during the day Saturday and I’ll also post a game thread so all of you can follow Rays/Phillies (6:15 CT) and D-backs/Padres (8:40 CT).
We still don’t know, as of the time of this post, where the Cubs will be playing Tuesday or who their Wild Card opponent will be. As always, we await developments.
