MLB Attendance Is Up 9% This Season, The Highest Increase In Attendance Since The McGwire - Sosa Home Run Chase
Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox. Getty Images.The reports of baseball's demise were greatly exaggerated because it turns out the sport is in the best place it's been in sometime. Jon Heyman tweeted today that total attendance around baseball is up 9%. It's the biggest increase since we've seen since Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa went homer for homer in the Summer of '98. Maybe the best summer of all time from a baseball point of view so this feels significant.
People are flocking to ballparks all over the country and for good reason. We've got a handful of surprise teams making runs, incredible young, exciting players all around the league, and just some damn good baseball being played. The quality of players has never been better if you ask me, and they are from all over. It's not just American born players, we have more international stars than ever in the game, hell the two best players in baseball are from Japan with Shohei Ohtani and Venezuela with Ronald Acuña Jr. People can't get enough baseball currently and I don't blame them.
It's a great sign for the game considering the debacle we experienced with the Covid season and the lockout. Things were bleak. As bad as Manfred has been he really made up for it with the rules changes. The results are staggering. The pitch clock has been a godsend as games are ending an hour earlier than they were last year. Games fly by at the ballpark in a good way. You're still seeing great action because of the other rule changes as well. Bigger bases, limiting the throw overs and stuff like that, it's all been great. So for all the times we shit on Robbie M and his incompetence, he has done some good recently and you are seeing it pay off. Couple that with MLB teams starting games earlier when school lets out, little stuff like that allows families to come and instead of a game starting at 7 and ending at 10:30, they're starting at 6:30 and ending around 9. That is huge. People are filling the stands for their guys.
I mentioned some surprise teams and fans coming out to see them. The Orioles are the second best team in baseball right now and are up about 5,000 fans per game from last year. All the money Texas spent last year is proving well worth it with how they've performed on the field in 2023. They're up about 6,000 fans per game in their new ballpark. The Pirates hot start fizzled out, but they're still up 5,000 fans. Hell, even the Cardinals who are garbage are up 1,000 fans per game from last season.
Baseball is in very good hands right now. Great players all around the country, teams playing over their heads and making it a fun and interesting summer, Ohtani doing stuff we've never seen before, Acuna Jr. putting on a clinic in the NL, no wonder why people can't get enough baseball in 2023.
And I can't do a blog talking about the Summer of '98 without some videos.
