‘Tarps Off’: How Shirtless Fans Took Over MLB

During the eighth inning of the Cardinals’ May 15 home showing against the Royals, members of the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team wanted to go “tarps off.” They were in town from Nacogdoches, Texas, for the NCBA Division I World Series, which was taking place in nearby Alton, Ill., and hoped to inject a little life into Busch Stadium.

After some initial nerves, SFA’s Bryce Bradford stepped up and said, “Screw it, I’ll do it.” He peeled off his shirt. Soon enough his entire team—and other fans nearby—were also shirtless, waving their tops around in the upper right field section of the ballpark. 

The Cardinals then rallied to an extra-inning walk-off win. “By the 11th inning, after the walk-off, you look around and we’re filling up four, nearly five sections of half-naked people,” Bradford tells Front Office Sports.

St. Louis gave the SFA team tickets to its game the next day, and invited them into the clubhouse afterward, where they met the players and manager Oliver Marmol. A few days later, Bradford threw out the first pitch to open the game against the Pirates. That game, too, had its own magic: Cardinals catcher Iván Herrera hit a walk-off home run in the 10th, and then started twirling his hand while facing the Tarps Off right-field section.

“It was just such a surreal moment to get to meet all those guys,” Bradford says. “Just something I would never think I’d get to do in my lifetime, something I would only get to dream about.”

Both fans and the Cardinals themselves were excited about the momentum the SFA team brought to St. Louis. So, even after SFA left later in the week, the Cardinals installed a “dedicated high-energy” general-admission section in Busch’s upper-right-field seats, which it said was inspired by the “Tarps Off atmosphere.”

What happened at the Cardinals’ game has spread across MLB and become a now–viral movement.

The Rays are marketing a left-field section of Steinbrenner Field as “Tarps Off territory,” chief business officer Bill Walsh tells FOS. (Both the Cardinals and Rays offered to change or upgrade seating for fans who brought tickets in designated sections but didn’t want to participate in the trend.) 

But the movement has also sprung up organically in stadiums across the country, from L.A. to Philadelphia. That also includes T-Mobile Park in Seattle—though a Mariners spokesperson declined to comment on the trend because it was “fan-driven.”

For the Cardinals specifically, the virality of Tarps Off is perfectly timed. Leaning into a designated section boosted a larger marketing initiative for the team, which experienced the largest home attendance drop-off of all MLB teams from 2024–25. Cardinals’ SVP of business operations Anuk Karunaratne tells FOS that his team is focused on catering to more varied demographics, including a younger audience.

Though Tarps Off is separate from the Cardinals’ organized fan experiences, Karunaratne welcomes the buzz—and thinks it’s best to stay hands off. “If we try to manufacture this and treat it like a promotion, it loses its original spirit,” he says. “This is about fans feeling like they’re participating in creating an atmosphere, and they’re leading that.”

Karunaratne says the Cardinals don’t plan on ending the Tarps Off section any time soon—unless fans complain. Meanwhile, the SFA club baseball team—despite being mostly Rangers and Astros fans—wants to return to Busch, shirts off, if the Cardinals make a playoff run. St. Louis currently sits second in the NL Central.

SFA is also continuing to ride the momentum of Tarps Off. Bradford says several Cardinals fans came to their games at the Club World Series. The team also started selling $22 Tarps Off T-shirts, which raised more than $11,000 to help cover travel costs and gear for future competitions.

“We didn’t invent this, but we kind of resurfaced it,” Bradford says. “It’s the best part—that’s what baseball is, when people come together and watch the sport, and you can celebrate by doing this as well.”