The Oakland Athletics Announced Attendance Last Night? 3,748. Yikes!
What an awful scene in Oakland last night, and I'm not talking about the offensive performance by the Orioles. The day after your home opener I think it's common for attendance to drop, but not this much. The announced attendance in Oakland was 3,748. They had a decent crowd for their home opener on Monday, 17,503, but man was last night's crowd bad. Capacity is over 46,000 and you aren't going to get a sellout every night, but this is barely scratching the surface. And I've seen some bad crowds in Baltimore, but not even 4K for the second game of the season is rough. Hell I was at a minor league game on a Tuesday last year where the attendance was over 5K. I don't blame the A's fans at all, this is something that has been building for a while with the rumors of them leaving, the team selling off anyone with a pulse, and also factor in the team raising season ticket prices. Not a fun time to be an Oakland fan right now and that is a shame because they've got some fun guys on that squad. Too bad no one saw them beat the Orioles in a great game. And not all the attendance numbers are actual people through the turnstiles, I know some teams do amount of tickets sold. Based off the video and pictures from this game it may actually be people through the turnstiles because it was a ghost town last night.
Even Bobby N had to get in and poke some fun at the Athletics fans, that is how you know it's bad. And again, I don't blame the fans. They've been pushed into a corner and they're showing the owner how they feel. Hopefully when it hurts his pocket's he'll start to notice and try to change something, but that probably won't happen and he'll use the low attendance as an excuse to move the team even though ownership is the reason for low attendance. It's upsetting to see since they're such a storied franchise, someone should show these numbers to the Reds owner too, maybe he'd change his tone quick. But seriously, it's a dump of a ballpark, it's massive, the team isn't expected to be very good, but only 3,700 fans is awful. There is supposed to be bad weather for Wednesday's game and they moved it up 3 hours, what is the attendance going to look like for that game? 2K? 1.5? Egg on the face of ownership, they did this. They have no one to blame but themselves. They had the debut of Nick Allen, one of their top prospects, last night and he gets to take the field to.....a crowd smaller than what he used to see in the minors. It'll be interesting to see how this goes the rest of the year, it won't be good, but how bad will it get. We may see some awful attendance numbers in Oakland.
PS. It's a shame only 3,748 people got to see this catch by Cristian Pache. He's unreal.