Major League Baseball is experiencing an epidemic of (mostly) guys being dudes.
At ballparks across the country, groups consisting of mostly young men are joining in on the “Tarps Off” trend that's loud, goofy, infectious and new to the baseball world. Joining in on the fun is simple: Go to the section where the party is happening, take off your shirt and start twirling it above your head.
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Fans go "tarps off"in the sixth inning of a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and Chicago White Sox, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Kevin Ng)
A group of fans in the upper deck wave their shirts as they go "tarps off" during the eighth inning of a baseball game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
Tampa Bay Rays fans cheer on the team during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles Monday, May 18, 2026, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Fans cheer and wave their shirts above their heads during the fifth inning of a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals Saturday, May 16, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Fans cheer with their shirts off after heading to the upper deck outfield seating during the ninth inning of a baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Soccer-like chants or singing usually follows — injecting a jolt of energy for a sport that occasionally is chided for its lack of energy inside the stadium.
After getting its start in St. Louis last Friday, it has spread across the league to places like Detroit, Tampa Bay, Philadelphia, Seattle and Anaheim.
Chad Bitzer, who has been coming to Mariners games for about 13 years, was among the shirtless fans in Seattle. His reasoning was simple: “Cause everyone else was taking it off. Why not?”
“It’s fresh. It’s a beautiful night. Take it off," Bitzer said. "Great Northwest night. We live for the summers. We live for the good weather.”
Ground zero for the shirtless outbreak was in St. Louis last Friday, when a club baseball team affiliated with Stephen F. Austin State University was in Alton, Illinois, for the National Club Baseball Division II World Series. The Cardinals offered tickets to the team, and 17 players attended.
That group started the fun, dozens of others joined and suddenly there were a couple hundred fans creating a ruckus in right field that helped propel the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory in 11 innings over the Kansas City Royals. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol loved the energy so much that he bought tickets for the shirtless revelers for Saturday's game and they returned.
“It’s hard not to have fun when the fans are like that,” Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn said Friday. “We’ve got the best fans in the world, but it seems like the younger generation makes it more like a college atmosphere.”
Even Cardinals mascot Fredbird joined in on the fun.
Now it might be the start of a tradition — more shirtless fans cheered for the Cardinals in Tuesday's game against the Pirates. It certainly seems to be a boost for the club's home-field advantage: Ivan Herrera hit a three-run homer to lift the Cardinals to a 9-6 win in 10 innings.
A similar outbreak of shirtless fans broke out at a Tampa Bay Rays game Monday and again Tuesday. Another small group celebrated in Philadelphia as the Reds and Phillies played in the rain. Angels fans celebrated with a mix of joy and irritation, chanting for owner Arte Moreno to sell the team.
MLB certainly won't complain about the attention. Attendance is up at big league stadiums so far this season, averaging roughly 1,000 more fans per game than a year ago through Monday's contests.
If the trend continues, baseball could average 30,000 fans per game for the first time since 2016.
More and more, they might just be shirtless.
AP Sports Writer Andrew Destin in Seattle and AP freelance writer Warren Mayes in St. Louis contributed to this report.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
Fans go "tarps off"in the sixth inning of a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and Chicago White Sox, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Kevin Ng)
A group of fans in the upper deck wave their shirts as they go "tarps off" during the eighth inning of a baseball game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
Tampa Bay Rays fans cheer on the team during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles Monday, May 18, 2026, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Fans cheer and wave their shirts above their heads during the fifth inning of a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals Saturday, May 16, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Fans cheer with their shirts off after heading to the upper deck outfield seating during the ninth inning of a baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Thousands of visitors were told to evacuate a remote Minnesota wilderness area accessible only by boat as wildfires send dangerously heavy smoke over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this week.
More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada, where a train crew in northern Ontario filmed themselves surrounded by flames before being safely evacuated. Winds are carrying the smoke southeast.
Warnings about unhealthy air conditions Wednesday extended from Minnesota through Toronto and into New York. Unusually hot summer temperatures were expected, too.
The best advice is to stay indoors to avoid both the smoke and the extreme heat, said Tyler Hasenstein, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
“Those two things coinciding with each other is not good from a health perspective,” he said.
In far northeastern Minnesota, rangers were trying to warn people that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was closed Tuesday because about 17 fires caused by lightning more than a week ago were spreading through the vast wilderness accessible primarily by canoe.
Rangers estimated anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 people were inside the 1.1-million-acre (445,000-hectare) wilderness, which is almost the size of Delaware, Superior National Forest spokesperson Joy VanDrie said.
“It’s an arduous job,” VanDrie said of rangers and campers having to canoe for hours or even carry their boats over land to evacuate.
No injuries or deaths have been reported. Rangers were going through every lake and waterway and officials estimated they had about 90% of the people out Wednesday.
Campers rescued this week said skies quickly darkened from smoke and they could feel the heat as they paddled or were taken by boat to safety.
Jan Bailey was camping with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren and three dogs when they noticed wispy smoke on the horizon. Two hours later, they could see a raging firestorm. A paddleboarder with a satellite phone fled to their campsite and they called forestry rangers who sent a boat to rescue them and others.
“We had fire on both sides of us at that time,” Bailey told Minnesota Public Radio. “So we’re just weaving between the lakes. It’s a little smoky. Campsites are going up."
Even authorities in Canada pitched in. They rescued two groups of youth campers Wednesday who had crossed the border. One group was stuck on an isolated sandbar, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said.
VanDrie didn’t know when the area might reopen. Minnesota officials said some fires in the Boundary Waters will be allowed to burn indefinitely but will be monitored to ensure they don’t threaten people or property.
Dan Westervelt, associate professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, said severe drought conditions combined with heat in Canada and the U.S. have created “a perfect storm for really dry conditions to provide a lot of fuel for these wildfires to burn.” Research shows warming temperatures from burning coal, oil and gas are making fires more frequent and intense.
High levels of fine particulate matter in the air from wildfire smoke may be unhealthy for sensitive groups, such as children and people with heart or lung conditions. The particulates can cause shortness of breath, coughing, dizziness or fatigue and aggravate heart and lung diseases and other chronic health issues.
Experts suggest wearing a N95 mask if you have to be outside and keeping your indoor air cleaner by closing windows and running an air purifier or air conditioner.
It's been a particularly busy and deadly fire season in the U.S. About four dozen large fires are currently burning across 15 states, from Minnesota and North Carolina to Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Prolonged drought and record low snowpack levels combined to make conditions ripe for rapid fire growth.
In Minnesota, officials warned large fires could burn for months. In Minneapolis, the high Wednesday was expected to be 96 degrees F (36 C) and temperatures above 90 F (32 C) were expected the rest of the week.
“It could well be we’re having significant fires throughout the summer until we have snow. Snow would be a good thing,” said Patty Thielen, director of the state Department of Natural Resources.
The smoke was so thick that the sky turned orange like Mars in northern Minnesota, said Matt Taraldsen, supervisory meteorologist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Part of the danger of the heat and smoke there is that only about half the buildings have air conditioning, Taraldsen said. Residents usually would open windows to keep cool “but when there’s dense smoke, you can’t do that,” he said.
Taraldsen's mother said she woke up in her Duluth, Minnesota, home Wednesday morning and everything smelled like a campfire. When she opened her door, her eyes watered and she had to use her inhaler to ease her asthma.
Typically, Theresa Taraldsen said, she can see the St. Louis River from her yard but it was all a white wall of smoke Wednesday.
“You literally couldn’t see nothing,” she said.
Officials in Michigan and Wisconsin warned residents about air quality issues that could last for days. People in New York reported smelling smoke Wednesday afternoon and the problems extended even to Maine, where residents were reporting a yellowish and brownish color in the sky.
The most intense smoke could spread as far south as Washington, D.C., by midday Thursday.
Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan and Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report.
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
Julian McTaggart is playfully pushed into the West River as smoke from Canadian wildfires creates an orange haze over the area on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, in Brattleboro, Vt. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP)
A cyclist passes the Minneapolis skyline along St. Anthony Parkway as smoke from wildfires in Canada and Northern Minnesota sets in, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
A plumes of smoke from the Camp Fire hang in the air over Moose Lake as multiple wildfires burn in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (Anthony Souffle/Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)
Willy Vosburgh, owner of Vosburgh's Custom Cabin Rentals on Moose Lake, uses a tow boat to evacuate canoeists from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness after multiple wildfires burning there prompted its closure and evacuation Tuesday, July 14, 2026 in Ely, Minn. (Anthony Souffle/Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)
A person in a face mask boards a streetcar in Toronto as wildfire smoke fills the city, on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press via AP)
Firefighters watch as a helicopter drops water on the Summit Fire in Llano, CA. Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
A cyclist passes the Minneapolis skyline along St. Anthony Parkway as smoke from wildfires in Canada and Northern Minnesota sets in, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
The CN Tower is pictured in Toronto as wildfire smoke fills the city, on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press via AP)
A law enforcement vehicle blocks off a road leading to the Fall Lake entry point, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, near Ely, Minn. (Anthony Soufflé/Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)
Signage near the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' office in Tower, Minn., notes extreme fire danger ,Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (Anthony Soufflé/Minnesota Star Tribune via AP)
