Boston Red Sox @ Tampa Bay Rays (3)

They have planted a large number of palm trees around the stadium, which was completed in the early 1990s. There are garden areas too, such as the one shown in the first picture, with its stream running down the middle. Each small area has a number of wild flowers planted there, with placards describing each section, much like a botanic garden has.

Although this stadium is now over 20 years old, it did follow the current trend of incorporating features of other old ballparks into its design. In this case, they have a large rotunda at the main entrance, like Ebbets Field (an old, long gone stadium in New York) did. In fact, just like Citi Field, the home of the Mets that I shall be visited next week, has in its structure when it was built a few years ago.

They've done their best with the area to try to make it inviting and the crowd sizes are OK, but according to some of the people I talked to, the "problem" is that the stadium is in St Petersburg and not in Tampa itself, which is where the large population centre is, and it's a relatively long journey across the bridge to get to the stadium for anybody on the Tampa side.

The final game of this three game set pitted Jake Peavy, another of the Red Sox's recent pick-ups against the Rays' Jeremy Hellickson. This was a tight game that went to-and-fro, and was tied at 3 when I had to leave. I saw Boston's David Ortiz hit a towering home run the other way - he really is strong! However, in the end, the Rays pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the 8th inning to salvage one game of the series and avoid the sweep.

My seat was back around in section 107 again, but a few rows further back, which meant that I could see the TV monitor that is installed towards the back of the section. What is handy is that the TV signal is about 3 seconds behind live, so if something happens at the plate and you want to see it again, you can look up and see the action happen again!

The unique feature of Tropicana Field is the Rays Tank. This is a water tank just beyond the centre field wall that contains a collection of rays that you can go in and pet, if you really want to. To date, since the tank was installed a few years ago, just two players have managed to hit a home run into the tank, which must have surprised the rays a little! The first picture was taken from my seat and you can see a group of visitors petting the animals, and then I went around and took a photo from that side back across the field in a period when they were "resting".