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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
IT FELT LIKE a fairy-tale start to Dansby Swanson‘s Chicago Cubs career.
Swanson had left the Atlanta Braves to sign a seven-year, $177 million deal with Chicago in December, in part because it was the city where his new wife, Mallory Pugh Swanson, played professional soccer for the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars.
Dansby was just two weeks into his first season in Chicago; Mallory was preparing to play for the U.S. women’s national team in a World Cup this summer in Australia and New Zealand. Together, they were looking forward to their first of many summers in Chicago.
Then, on April 8 before a game against the Texas Rangers at Wrigley Field, Dansby and his teammates gathered in the clubhouse to watch Mallory play in a friendly against Ireland and the mood changed in an instant.
Mallory went to the ground with a nasty left knee injury, after a collision with Ireland’s Aoife Mannion. Teammates and coaches surrounded her as she was carted off the field. The stunned Cubs watched it all unfold on television.
“It was definitely intense, especially because we were watching the game together as a team,” recalled Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner. “It turned from a cool thing and looking forward to the World Cup to immediate concern for a teammate.”
The news that Mallory had torn her patellar tendon added an unexpected challenge to the couple’s lives and completely altered Dansby’s early months in Chicago. Now, two months into Mallory’s minimum six-month rehab, Dansby is marking his mark on the surging Cubs, and Mallory is well enough to join him in England this weekend for MLB’s London Series between the Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals.
“She’s played and trained there [London] so I’m happy she can go,” Dansby said earlier in the week. “And I’m happy she can enjoy the success she’s getting in rehab — it’s been a grind, for sure.”
SLEEP WAS SCARCE during those early days in April, when Dansby Swanson had to play major league baseball while his wife underwent surgery and began her recovery. On April 12, Swanson even missed a game, his first since 2021.
“It’s been incredibly tough,” Swanson said. “When you see the person you love the most be hurt like that, it’s just emotional. Just devastating.”
His professional athlete wife now needed help in almost every aspect; just moving from room to room was a challenge. It added an element to Swanson’s daily routine that made playing baseball that much harder.
On the day of Mallory’s injury, Swanson led the Cubs to a resounding 10-3 victory over Texas. But he went hitless in four of his next five games, a stretch in which manager David Ross gave him a rare day off.
“The difficult part just comes in being pretty fricking tired every day,” Swanson said “She was up [at night], I’m up … It’s truly the sickness-and-health part.”
As Mallory settled into her physical therapy routine, Swanson’s mind returned, in part, to baseball, where there was work to be done. The Cubs finished April with an acceptable 14-13 record but went just 10-18 in May.
“I care a lot about my wife and [her] health, but I also care about this,” Swanson said, pointing to the diamond from the home dugout at Wrigley Field. “It’s just been a new challenge, each day giving as much as you can and more, and then getting your rest and doing it again the next day.”
June (12-7) has been more promising. The Cubs are just 3.5 games behind the first-place Cincinnati Reds as they attempt to build a winning team again after their historic run last decade.
“I hope that everyone can see that,” Swanson said of the Cubs’ recent climb. “I feel like things are on the up-and-up. We’re establishing what we’re all about. This is the Chicago Cubs brand. Bits and pieces are falling into place.”
SWANSON LEFT A good thing in Atlanta for a team trying to find its way back to prominence. Leadership from the former No. 1 overall draft pick was expected from day one. In his mind, the best way to lead is to be there, doing it. It’s why missing even a single game — despite having a good reason, with his wife’s injury — didn’t sit well with him.
“Atlanta taught me consistency, especially when Freddie [Freeman] was there,” Swanson said. “Just the consistency to show up every day and do the same things, and kind of live in a gear three or four and not be in a one or a six.”
That’s not the only thing Swanson brought from Atlanta. He has been in the middle of the Cubs’ stellar defense this season, following up his Gold Glove year in Atlanta with one that possibly has been even better. He has been a vacuum at shortstop, thanks in part to the pregame routine from Braves coach Ron Washington he brought with him.
It’s a simple enough drill: Before the game, players get on their knees just a few feet from a coach while he hits short hops to them. Forehand and backhand. Side to side.
“It’s not strenuous,” Swanson said. “It’s a lot of good rhythm and mental prep work. I’ve seen that work for so many different players.”
Swanson, who had four outs above average through June last season, has 10 already this year, tied with Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes for the most in baseball. And he just ended a 54-game errorless streak that spanned two months. He has made the highlight-reel plays, leaping to nab liners and ranging deep into holes to snare hard-hit grounders, while also making the routine outs look … routine.
“Great defense is fun,” Swanson said. “Great defense, to me, isn’t just diving plays. Great defense happens at all times. It happens in the moments you’re not watching.”
“No one is close to him on defense,” one NL scout said. “There may be some better on offense, but he owns that position right now.”
He’s not content to settle there, though. In his opening news conference, Swanson also expressed a desire to get better at the plate — specifically hoping to cut down on strikeouts: He had 182 last season after previously setting a career mark with 167 the year before.
That’s improving in Chicago, too: His strikeout percentage (22.6) is the second lowest of his career, and his walk rate (11.3) is his highest. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, that walk-to-strikeout rate has nearly doubled from last season — at 185%, it’s the seventh-largest increase among all players.
“The way you walk more is being more ready to hit,” Swanson said. “Being more ready to hit and proactive means you’re going to be better at taking the balls and swinging at the strikes … Maturity as a player comes into play. It’s not a one-stop answer.”
Swanson has heard the theory that drastically improving plate discipline at the major league level sometimes isn’t attainable. That it’s already part of your DNA when you arrive. He doesn’t buy it.
“If you are who you are, then how do you get any better?” he asked.
But with the improved walk-to-strikeout ratio has come less power. Swanson belted 25 home runs last season and 27 in 2021. He has just seven this year — but he doesn’t believe he has sacrificed one for the other.
“A lot of good pitches to drive, I’ve either just hit a hard line drive for a single or I’ve fouled it off,” Swanson said. “That’s where the lack of power comes from.”
As Dansby Swanson looks to improve every aspect of his game and the Cubs continue their climb back to relevance, Mallory is moving just as quickly in a positive direction. The couple has even begun to enjoy Chicago, exploring their neighborhood more than they could in their first days living in their new city.
“She’s doing well,” Swanson said, allowing himself a slight smile. “Moving around well. And I think things will consistently keep getting better and better.”
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Max Olson
Stanford outside linebacker David Bailey entered the transfer portal Friday, sources told ESPN.
The 6-foot-3, 250-pound pass rusher entered the portal as a graduate transfer and is expected to be one of the top players available during the upcoming spring transfer window.
Bailey, a former Freshman All-America and a 16-game starter, is the first Cardinal player to enter the portal since Stanford fired coach Troy Taylor on Tuesday. Over his three seasons in the program, Bailey recorded 111 tackles, 22.5 tackles for loss and 14.5 sacks off the edge.
He also has produced 81 pressures over his three seasons, according to ESPN Research, which would rank first among all ACC pass rushers set to return in 2025.
Bailey was a highly touted recruit for the Cardinal as the No. 122 player in the ESPN 300 for 2022 coming out of powerhouse Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California. He immediately earned a starting role as a true freshman and received Freshman All-America recognition after recording 8.5 tackles for loss in his debut season.
Stanford junior wide receiver Mudia Reuben also entered the transfer portal on Friday, sources said. Reuben caught 24 passes for 283 yards and three touchdowns over three seasons with the Cardinal.
Stanford’s decision to fire Taylor came a week after ESPN reported that two outside firms had found Taylor bullied and belittled female athletic staffers, sought to have an NCAA compliance officer removed after she warned him of rules violations and repeatedly made “inappropriate” comments to another woman about her appearance.
Following a 3-9 season, Stanford has lost 20 scholarship players to the portal this offseason, including seven who moved on to other Power 4 programs in December. The Cardinal brought in former star quarterback Andrew Luck as their new general manager in November.
The NCAA’s spring transfer window is April 16-25, but the firing of Taylor also opens up a 30-day period for Stanford players to enter the portal if they wish. Graduate transfers like Bailey also can enter the portal ahead of the April window.
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Jorge Castillo
TAMPA, Fla. — The most unique transformation of a ballpark in Major League Baseball history launched in earnest Sunday at 5 p.m.
That was when the Tampa Bay Rays, after playing a Grapefruit League game against the New York Yankees as the visiting team, were handed the keys to George M. Steinbrenner Field, which will be the Rays’ residence for the 2025 season. It began an unprecedented four-day mission to make their rival team’s stadium look and feel like their own before Friday’s sold-out season opener against the Colorado Rockies.
The Rays will play their entire 81-game home schedule at Steinbrenner Field this season because in October, Hurricane Milton tore through Tropicana Field, their home across the bay in St. Petersburg since their inaugural season in 1998. Winds that reached 120 mph shredded chunks of the building’s fiberglass roof. The damage was deemed too extensive to repair in time to play baseball in 2025.
Converting Steinbrenner Field — the home of the Yankees every spring, and of their Single-A affiliate Tampa Tarpons, since 1996 — was a massive undertaking. MLB pushed back the Rays’ home opener from Thursday to Friday, giving the organization an extra day to prepare. Still, more than 80 Rays staff members and more than 50 contractors from five companies contributed around the clock. The plan included rebranding the property with more than 3,000 signs, big and small, enough to stretch a mile if laid out end to end.
The Rays were free to repaint, but, in a rare break for the franchise during the upheaval, much painting wasn’t necessary because the Yankees’ navy blue pantone (PMS 289 C) is not far from the Rays’ navy blue (PMS 648 C). There was one thing explicitly off limits during the ballpark makeover: the 600-pound bronze statue of George Steinbrenner, the late Yankees owner, standing on a marble pedestal by the main entrance.
The work covered every nook and cranny, obvious and obscure, from the home clubhouse, which was open to the Rays starting Monday at 4:30 p.m., to the two team stores on the property to the massive “Y-A-N-K-E-E-S” lettering above the right- and left-field stands. There were cranes and scissor lifts and cameras to record a time-lapse video of something that has never been done: a major league team moving out of a stadium after spring training and another one moving into it for the summer.
“We’re not going to get every single pinstripe gone in the next four days and that’s not really the goal,” Rays chief business officer Bill Walsh said Sunday, shortly after the Rays were given the green light to take over the ballpark. “The goal is to have this place feel — when you’re walking around, when you’re sitting in the seating bowl — to feel like this is the home of the Rays.”
Above all, Walsh noted, is making the stadium feel like home for the players.
On Sunday, they played as the road team against the Yankees. On Wednesday, less than 72 hours later, players walked into the home clubhouse for the first time ahead of a team workout. That gave them 48 hours to become acclimated to their new surroundings after calling Port Charlotte, 90 minutes south, home for the previous six weeks. Rays manager Kevin Cash didn’t expect a difficult transition for a team looking forward to the end of the spring training grind.
“I mean, getting out of Port Charlotte,” Cash joked, “they’ll take f—ing anything.”
PLAYING A FULL season in the spring home of a division rival qualifies as less than ideal. Multiple options in the area were considered. Steinbrenner Field was deemed the most major-league-ready choice. A one-year deal between the Rays and Yankees was struck in November giving the Rays full-time use of the stadium and New York more than $15 million in return.
Steinbrenner Field was already undergoing the final phase of a substantial renovation to player and staff facilities with health and wellness upgrades that include a two-story weight room, a kitchen with a dedicated staff and a players’ lounge with an arcade.
The project — which began last offseason with the renovation of the home clubhouse — made the stadium more of a fit for the Rays, beyond its convenient location. More work was required to bring the building up to MLB regular-season standards, including remodeling the visiting clubhouse and improvements to cabling and broadcast infrastructure.
The Tarpons will play their home games at a field next to the stadium that was upgraded with lights and seating for 1,000 people. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred estimated the entire operation would cost $50 million.
“A gentleman from the Yankees said this in one of our first meetings: ‘We may not root for you on the field, but we can root for you to have a field,'” Walsh recalled. “We just appreciate the collaborative spirit that they really put forth here.”
Still, Steinbrenner Field seats just 11,026. The Rays ranked 28th in attendance across the majors last season, but their 16,515 average was still significantly higher than their new home’s capacity. Further complicating the situation, the organization had already renewed their season-ticket base for Tropicana Field in 2025 by September.
Playing in an open-air stadium during a Florida summer will be an issue, too, between the unforgiving heat and constant rain. MLB moved first-pitch times starting in June back from 7:05 p.m. to 7:35 p.m. and gave the Rays more home games before June. Tampa Bay will play 19 of its first 22 games at home and 37 of its first 54 games there.
To prepare for the inevitable elements, director of special projects and field operations Dan Moeller had six of the Rays’ eight full-time groundskeepers work Yankees Grapefruit League home games alongside the Yankees’ crew, while two stayed behind to maintain the team’s 85 acres around Tropicana Field.
Moeller said his crew helped pull out the tarp twice this spring, good practice for when the games matter. Tropicana Field, unsurprisingly, has never housed a tarp. The first one in franchise history will have a Budweiser logo on what is prime advertising real estate.
The work won’t be entirely foreign to Moeller and his grounds crew. They maintain the team’s six natural fields in Port Charlotte. Moeller, who was hired by the franchise in 1997, also previously worked on the team’s five outdoor fields, including Al Lang Stadium, at their former spring training complex in St. Petersburg through 2008.
“I’m not quite sure what to expect,” Moeller said. “But we got the best grounds crew in the major leagues and we’ll deal with whatever’s thrown at us. My guys are up for the task, and they’re excited about it.”
VETERAN SECOND BASEMAN Brandon Lowe considered Sunday’s game against the Yankees at Steinbrenner Field more important than a typical exhibition. For him, it was an opportunity to become more familiar with the ballpark. With ground balls on the playing surface. With the background from the batter’s box.
“I feel like baseball players are very resilient and very good at adapting to changes,” said Lowe, who lives in Tampa and will have his commute to work cut significantly. (His manager isn’t so lucky — Cash, who lives in St. Petersburg, said his will increase from just eight minutes to 25.)
The afternoon served as a reminder that it wasn’t home quite yet. The Rays heard a smattering of cheers, but the loudest ones were for Aaron Judge and the Yankees for a game that ended in a tie and doubled as a dress rehearsal for the organization.
Up in the 29-seat press box, the Rays’ public relations team tried to figure out how it would handle large groups of media during the regular season and potentially beyond, while TV and radio broadcast teams adapted themselves to their new workplace.
One problem they encountered: Broadcasters can’t see the bullpens from the booths. The Rays would have to install new camera feeds.
Ryan Bass, the team’s sideline reporter for Fanduel Sports Network Sun, noted there often might not be enough room for him to sit in the camera wells next to the dugouts during games as he normally does.
“From our perspective, doing TV each and every day, we got to figure out, during the course of the season, what the best method is for making sure we bring Rays baseball to fans,” Bass said before Sunday’s game. “I think from what you see March 28th to what you see April 27th, will be completely different just from being really able to get a feel with so many home games to start the year.”
After the game, Yankees manager Aaron Boone finished packing up his office and left it for Cash.
“I’m getting out of here today,” Boone said with a smile, “so I’ll leave him something.”
For the Rays, the pace was frenetic. Sunday evening, when reached by phone for an interview just 90 minutes after Tampa Bay was given clearance to start the makeover, Walsh kindly asked if he could call back in five minutes.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m hanging up a sign.”
Around him, the outfield walls were being power-washed for advertisement installations on Monday, sod featuring ads from Yankees sponsors was being cut out and replaced, one of the team stores was being stocked with Rays gear, and, with help from Walsh, signs were going up everywhere.
The next morning, the Yankees packed and moved out of the home clubhouse ahead of a flight to Miami, emptying the room for the next tenants.
As they did so, Yankees reliever Scott Effross asked a clubhouse attendant a question that was on everybody’s minds this spring: What are the Rays going to do with the giant Yankees logo light fixture suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room?
The answer, revealed Wednesday, was covering it with a Rays-branded box. Nearby, a nonslip, Rays-branded rug concealed tiling leading to the showers with “The Bronx” spelled out on it. Down the hall, Rays logos replaced Yankees logos on training tables and whirlpool tiles. In the press box, photos of former Rays and framed media guide covers were hung.
Outside, beyond the center-field wall, on the facade facing Dale Mabry Highway, a billboard was mounted featuring the organization’s “Rays Up” tagline, to let every car speeding past the ballpark know George M. Steinbrenner Field is the home of the Rays.
At the bottom, however, is a reminder that it is only temporary:
“THANK YOU, YANKEES!”
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