The nest, Duke Energy Florida spokesperson Ana Gibbs told the Tampa Bay Times, apparently made contact with equipment. Gibbs said that likely caused sparks or a flare.
As a result, almost 13,000 of her customers were left without power for three minutes.
Over 15,000 fans (hey, nice job getting out to the game, Tampa Bay!) sat in relative darkness before play resumed at almost 9 p.m. The outage inside the Trop lasted 36 minutes before play — which paused in the bottom of the fourth inning with the Rays down 3-0 against the Anaheim Angels — finally resumed.
Fans who stayed turned their phone flashlights on during the outage (photographer Monica Herndon took this pretty cool photo) and were treated to BOGO soda and beer through last call.
Hope this doesn’t happen when that big ass Christmas light maze hits Tropicana this winter.
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This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2019.