Here are Rays' top 5 Opening Day moments

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays don’t always win on Opening Day. But when they do, they tend to put on a show.

Four of their first 15 Opening Day victories were walk-off wins. One involved a local product hitting a go-ahead triple in the eighth inning of his first game with his hometown team. One ended with a walk-off homer at the club’s home away from home. There were a couple big wins over the Yankees, Blue Jays, Orioles, Tigers and Twins, too. And, of course, there was one loss on March 31, 1998, that ultimately felt like a big win considering all it took just to bring baseball to Tropicana Field.

Let’s look at five of the Rays’ best Opening Day moments.

1. Carlos Pena downs the Yankees
Date: April 6, 2012

Peña established himself as the franchise’s premier first baseman from 2007-10, a run marked by two postseason appearances and his 144 home runs. After spending 2011 with the Cubs, Peña was welcomed back like a hero on Opening Day 2012. And he returned to the Rays in style.

Also, just consider who the Rays were facing. This was the Yankees’ lineup that afternoon at Tropicana Field: Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Robinson Canó, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, Raul Ibañez, Russell Martin and Brett Gardner. Their starting pitcher was CC Sabathia. Their setup men, Rafael Soriano and David Robertson, were former/future closers. And their actual closer was a Hall of Famer by the name of Mariano Rivera.

Rays starter James Shields gave up six runs in his five innings of work, but Peña put the team on his back. In the bottom of the first, he got the Trop crowd of 34,078 rocking with a two-out grand slam off Sabathia to give the Rays a 4-0 lead. Evan Longoria homered in the third, pulling them within a run, then both teams went quiet until the ninth.

In came the seemingly invincible Rivera to face the top of Tampa Bay’s lineup. Desmond Jennings singled and scored on a game-tying triple by Ben Zobrist. The Yankees intentionally walked Longoria and Luke Scott to load the bases, then Rivera struck out Sean Rodríguez for the first out of the inning.

All Peña needed to do was hit something deep enough to the outfield to drive in the winning run, and he did exactly that. His fly ball to left-center landed at the base of the fence for a walk-off single, capping a wild homecoming for Peña and a 7-6 win for the Rays.

2. Carl Crawford completes the comeback
Date: March 31, 2003

Facing future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez on Opening Day 2003, Tampa Bay was unsurprisingly limited to just one run in seven innings. In fact, Martinez held his opponent hitless through three innings. So the Devil Rays entered the ninth at Tropicana Field trailing the Red Sox, 4-1. Then came a stunning rally.

It began with a Travis Lee single and a Terry Shumpert pinch-hit homer off Alan Embree. That made it a one-run game. With two on and two outs, a 21-year-old Crawford -- just beginning his first full season in the Majors -- stepped up to the plate against right-hander Chad Fox.

Crawford reached down to club a 1-2 pitch over the fence in right-center field, then pumped his right fist after rounding first base. His blast capped the Devil Rays’ five-run ninth inning and finished their 6-4 win over Boston.

3. Denard Span's happy homecoming
Date: March 29, 2018

Consider the context here. For one, this was the first game of the final season of Span’s 11-year Major League career. And for the first time, it was a real “home” game for the Tampa native. And even though it was a bad matchup for him on paper against Red Sox lefty Chris Sale, who’d eventually get the final out of the World Series seven months later, Span got the start in left field.

So the Red Sox scored three early runs against Chris Archer and another one in the seventh, taking a 4-0 lead before a crowd of 31,042 at the Trop. Then came the bottom of the eighth, when Matt Duffy drove in a run off reliever Joe Kelly to get the Rays on the board. Three walks later, they had another run and a legitimate rally going.

Up came Span to face Carson Smith with two outs. The veteran outfielder one-hopped a triple off the wall in right field, clearing the bases and giving the Rays a 5-4 lead. Span immediately scored on an Adeiny Hechavarría single, and Alex Colomé shut the door in the ninth to seal another dramatic Opening Day victory.

4. Welcome to Steinbrenner Field, home of the Rays
Date: March 28, 2025

Put simply, the whole thing felt surreal. The Rays’ season opener against the Rockies was pushed back a day to give the club more time to prepare their temporary home ballpark: George M. Steinbrenner Field, where they spent the 2025 season after Tropicana Field sustained significant damage during Hurricane Milton the previous October. But there it was, Opening Day outdoors in the Tampa Bay area.

The game itself was nothing special in the early going. The Rockies took a two-run lead, and the Rays erased it in the seventh inning. So they went to the ninth, still tied at 2, when Kameron Misner came to the plate to lead off the inning against Victor Vodnik.

Misner probably shouldn’t have even been there. He was optioned to Triple-A during Spring Training but came back to replace the injured Richie Palacios. He didn’t start the game, but he entered as a defensive replacement in left field in the eighth inning after a series of substitutions. And he was not exactly riding a hot streak, having gone 1-for-15 with 10 strikeouts in his MLB debut in 2024.

In the end, after one of those magic moments only baseball can provide, none of that mattered. Misner ripped a walk-off shot to right field, becoming the first player in Major League history to hit a walk-off home run on Opening Day for his first career homer. It was a strange, ultimately disappointing season with a start that nobody will forget.

5. The beginning
Date: March 31, 1998

Yes, the Rays have played better games on Opening Day than this 11-6 loss to the Tigers. Two years later, for instance, Fred McGriff hit a grand slam and “The Hit Show” cruised to a 7-0 win over the Twins. But it’s hard to explain what it meant when Wilson Alvarez threw the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ first pitch ever to Detroit’s Brian Hunter in front of an Opening Day crowd of 45,369 at Tropicana Field.

That was the moment Major League Baseball arrived in the Tampa Bay area after decades of work to attract a team and many more decades of baseball history in the area. Three years after St. Petersburg was awarded an expansion franchise, all those dreams finally became real the moment that first pitch -- low and inside, for ball one -- was thrown.