September 13, 2007
A Perfect Crowd
Take two losing teams, put them in a stadium nobody likes on a hot, humid Wedesday afternoon and what do you get? No fans. Someone counted 375 people.
OMG someone counted them. The sad part is that the count is probably pretty accurate. If you don't believe it, take a look for yourselves.
JRS yesterday.
The attendance was so small that even a fan got tossed for heckling the umpire.
FishStripes asks if a new stadium will really change things. In my opinion, not until the team wins. Unless, of course, the new stadium is in a city that actually wants a baseball team. The Havana Marlins, anyone?
Posted by David Pinto at
10:28 AM
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Attendance
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They'd get more fans if they relocated to Montreal.
Just checked the official attendance (below the box score)...which was 10,121?? How do they get 10,121?? Was this picture taken when everyone was off buying hot dogs and t-shirts?
I blame management for putting a poor product on the field. Same with Tampa Bay. Just contract the two teams, disperse their players, move Milwaukee back to the American League Central, and Cleveland to the American League East.
The Marlins have an excellent offense that also happens to be young, plus a lot of pitching potential. They've won the World Series twice in the past ten years. If the fans don't recognize a successful franchise currently with a young team on the rise, then Miami's not the place to play. What happens next year when they decide to sign two free agent pitchers and two of the young guys figure it out -- another run at the Series.
Tampa Bay's been much more pathetic compared to Florida in terms of organizational success, but there's some hope there, too, finally.
Official attendance in the NL is measured by tickets sold, not bodies throu the turnstiles. In the AL, it's actually the number of fans present.
As to the Marlins...David says "Not until the team wins."
Well, the team's only been around 14 years and they already have two World Championships. That's a pretty good ratio. They've only drawn over 2 million twice--3 M in the inaugural season, and 2.4 M in the 97 Championship season.
There's just clearly not a major demand in Miami beyond that, and the constant threats of their leaving will hobble building any base. They should just plan on a ceiling of 2-2.5 million, and build a small 30,000 seat, intimate, chaming ballpark.
Or move.
Though John N's suggestion is actually better than either.
The attendance number, of course, is tickets sold, not the turnstile count. You get all sorts of nonsense like this - and predictable comments on it - late in the season when a team is way out of it. The season ticket-holders, and some just plain ticket-holders, don't bother showing up any more.
Which is why baseball can predict its attendance pretty well. The late walk-up sales are the only variable, and they're not usually enormous. This year looks like, oh, 78 million or thereabouts.
By the way, Reds announcer Marty Brennaman gets a funny bit out of this. Or at least he used to get a funny bit. Don't know if he still does it. I haven't listened to too many Reds broadcasts lately.
Let's say the official attendance was 17,869. Brennaman would solemnly intone: "17,869 tickets were sold for today's titanic struggle."
Once Brennaman got an e-mail asking if he wasn't afraid of a copyright-infringement suit from the makers of that movie. Marty wasn't sacred of legal action. After all, he said, James Cameron is too busy counting his money, Leonardo DiCaprio couldn't care less, and Kate Winslet probably doesn't even know what baseball is.