Rays cap Week of Giving with adoption event at Trop

ST. PETERSBURG -- As the bright lights from Enchant Christmas shined from the baseball diamond late Friday afternoon at Tropicana Field, court was in session inside the AeroVanti Club a few floors above. Families lined up along the wall then moved, one after the other, in front of a stage where four judges took turns finalizing adoptions.

For more than an hour, there were plenty of cheers and just as many tears. The new families posed for photos, with one mother and son wearing matching shirts that read, “Out of my way, it’s finally adoption day.” They sat for meals together then headed downstairs for early admission to enjoy Enchant’s light maze and Christmas village.

The “Home Run for the Holidays” event on Friday, hosted by Family Support Services of Pasco and Pinellas Counties as well as the Rays and Rowdies Foundation, saw 18 families finalize 24 adoptions at Tropicana Field. It was a happy and heartwarming ending to the Rays’ annual “Week of Giving,” a full week of holiday donations and events for local nonprofits and families.

“It’s incredible,” Rays manager of community development Will Wetzel said. “When you walk around this room, you see a lot of people with a napkin for their food and then a napkin for their eyes. That’s a super cool thing to see. Just to play a small part in something that is impacting lives forever here is pretty awesome.”

This was the Rays’ biggest Week of Giving yet, running from Monday to Friday with an event every day. That was in addition to the club’s daily service with Feeding Tampa Bay, as each department in the organization volunteered at Trinity Café -- eight shifts across five days at both locations -- and combined to serve 1,500 meals throughout the week.

The outreach started Monday afternoon, when the Rays and Rowdies staff volunteered at the Metropolitan Ministries Tampa residential campus to prepare meals in the kitchen, receive donations in the clothing warehouse, help in the pantry and support teachers in the childcare center.

It continued Tuesday with the Rays and Rowdies’ annual front-office toy drive, which had been open the past month. Reliever Pete Fairbanks and his wife, Lydia, caught wind of the toy drive and wound up donating more than 40 toys to the cause. In partnership with Univision, the teams dropped off toys at the Hispanic Service Council for them to distribute to the community they assist. Then they hosted a pizza party, completed with an appearance by Raymond, for those families.

On Wednesday, the Rays and Rowdies joined with Good Sports to donate $30,000 worth of sports equipment to the baseball, softball and soccer teams at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Fla. Charlotte County, the Rays’ Spring Training home, was dealt catastrophic damage as a result of Hurricane Ian, the devastating storm that struck the area in late September 2022.

On Thursday, staff volunteers from the Rays and Rowdies front offices and Bayfront Health -- along with pitching coach Kyle Snyder, who stopped by to help -- gathered in Tropicana Field’s Gate 1 rotunda in partnership with Operation Military Matters to assemble care packages for active-duty military members overseas during the holiday season.

Then came Friday’s finale. It was the second year for this event, which Family Support Services President and CEO Jenn Petion noted with a smile took them “a little outside the courthouse.” Last year, they finalized 13 adoptions. Working with a number of groups they see during the season inside the Big Game James Club suite, that number increased to 24 during Friday’s ceremony, with one family even returning from last year’s event to finalize another adoption.

“It has been an incredible Week of Giving, as a whole, for the Rays. I couldn’t be more proud of our staff for being out there every single day this week doing something special,” team president Brian Auld said during Friday’s ceremony. “It’s just been a great way to give back to the greater Tampa Bay community."