Attendance Records & Elder Abuse?

I have a male coworker who he and I kind of have a small competitive nature during baseball season. He is originally from Nebraska (which doesn't have a MLB team) in the state -- so he chose the Chicago Cubs as his team growing up. Well once he found out I was from St. Louis, we obviously became baseball competitors. One of the first days that we realized we rooted for the the "rival" squad we had started discussing how fans of the two teams have always been such loyal and spirited fans. They love their teams even after they move away. Somehow we started debating which team has the higher attendance of their fans at home games during the season. I honestly had never done any research on Cubs games attendance, but I figured, how the heck could a team who has barely ever even made it to the playoffs in it's history even come close to the attendance of a team who has the second most World Series titles of any franchise in MLB history.

Well, when I walked into work the next morning I found about 5 pages stapled together on my desk showing the attendance records for all the major league teams over the past 5 years. And as I flipped through each page the Cubs and the Cardinals attendances were highlighted. Well, it turns out that he was comparing them on percentage of attendance in their home stadiums -- which I guess is the appropriate way to do it since the Cubs stadium holds a lot less people than the Cardinals old and new stadiums.

Yeah, let me say I totally didn't believe my coworker when he'd been saying the day before that the Cubs sell out the majority of their home games each year, and yes, that's even including how a good majority of their games are daytime games during the week. For anyone who is not versed in Cubs history or a Chicago native, you have to admit that would be very hard to believe. Yeah, so when he showed me the attendance records I was shocked to see that the Cubs beat the Cardinals in percentage every year that he printed...as the Cubs averaged high 80s to 90s percentage of stadium capacity each year. The Cubs were typically the MLB team in the top 3 teams for highest percentage of attendance each year. But you don't have to take my word for it...you can go check it out here for yourself: http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

So I share all that with you today as an introduction to the Rangers vs. Cubs spring training game today. Now, it's not that my friend and I are by any means pros on this whole spring training stuff, but I can say we've never seen packed stadiums for any weekday DAY game. The only sold out game we ever went too (and it turned out that just as we got up to the ticket window two seats were released and we were able to snag them) was the VERY first spring training game we went to last year, which was a Sunday afternoon game for the HOME TEAM Arizona diamondbacks...that makes sense because the Diamondbacks do spring training in Tuscan rather than Phoenix to draw more fans since Phoenix gets them during the regular season. So besides that game, we've really never had much motivation to purchase our tickets for the spring training games in advance, because there usually is no problem buying them at the window at game time.

Well, today we got off the highway to attend the Rangers vs. Cubs game AT the Cubs stadium at about 12:40 PM...game time 1 PM. We were about 1.5 miles from the stadium and we were completely stopped in a line to get to the stadium. Now I must say I started getting rather discouraged as I noticed more and more people wondering up and down the sidewalk flashing signs saying "I Need Tickets". Umm...me too? Yikes. Still being hopeful since there were the same deal going on as we pulled up to the Diamondbacks game in Tuscan the year before, I couldn't help but have flashbacks of the attendance conversations I'd had with my coworker. Yikes...Cubbie fans come all the way to Phoenix too!?!?!?!

Yeah, after SLOWLY moving along in the line for 50 minutes we got up by the stadium and parked in a cheap $3 parking lot. We had asked the lady who was collecting money for the lot if the game was sold out and she said, that's what people are telling her as they come back to their cars. I asked if they normally sell out and she said, "No, the stadium holds some 13,000 fans, and they usually just average about 11,000" Well, we had waited this long in the line and in the car, might as well get out and go see the stadium and stretch out leg some, so we began the trek up to the stadium past all the scalpers.

Yep, it had been sold out, but I figured why not walk around the stadium and listen in some and see if maybe we could view in from a gate or something. Well we got around to the outfield fence and were able to do just that. We actually watched from the top of the 3rd inning through the middle of the 7th inning by standing at the barred fence in center field peering over the fans sitting and standing in the lawn seats. Wow, it was certainly a packed house, and yep, the Cub fans were getting a good game alright. We got there in time to see the Cubs score 3 runs in the 3rd inning and it remained 3-0 the whole time we stayed watching. Nothing for Rangers fans to get excited about.

Turns out that the Rangers lost 4-1...yep, another loss, but at least we only paid $3 (parking) to see it...HA!

About the most excitement we got for the day today was on our trek back to our car when a gentleman walked up to this elderly old white gentleman who was sitting in a lawn chair just right off the sidewalk. The elderly gentleman had a cooler next to him and he was selling bottled waters for fans to purchase to take into the stadium. Well turns out that the gentleman who approached him was the home owner of the house behind that man, as well as the two next to it. Well this gentleman was apparently NOT going to have someone running a "business" out of the small little corner of his lot (right next to an electric pole, which the man even spouted off about how even if he was sitting up against the electric pole, that still wasn't city property, but rather HIS property). I mean it was CRAZY. This middle aged white man just started yelling at the top of his lungs at this older man, telling him to get off his property and that he's told him before and he better get out right now. I mean just going OFF! It literally started about 4 feet in front of us...and we just were like...uh, let's keep going. Well, obviously with the commotion everyone nearby started looking -- including two large black gentleman who were all smiles after just selling off their last scalped tickets (well at least that's what they just told us, not real sure who would buy tickets for $70 to get into the game in the 7th inning...but whatever). Well I kinda thought these two gentleman might come to the older man's aid, but uh, they just kinda said something and then were like us -- didn't want to get in the middle of that...HA! I mean I guess if that's that dude's property he has every right to boot someone off it, especially if he's said something to him before as he claimed, but at the same time I was thinking, um, couldn't it have been handled differently? Maybe Adult Protective Services should have been called for verbal abuse of the elderly?! HA! Yeah, not sure why the elderly gentleman decided to setup there, seeings how he could have done it on the other side of the street with everyone else who was selling water to fans on that side, as they weren't getting yelled at, but maybe that was his point...water sales were too saturated on that side. All in all it was nuts to overhear...

So tomorrow maybe we'll get to sit and watch a game...HA! It IS another "away" game as the Rangers are playing the Mariners at the Mariners' stadium, AND it's an evening game, so people will be off work and more able to come, but it's just the Mariners, right!?! HA! Maybe we'll try to swing by the stadium before game time JUST in case...HA!

NOTE: Yeah, so the crowd at the Cubs vs. Rangers game today was 13,157, the fourth-largest crowd in HoHoKam Park's (the Cubs home Spring Training park) history. NUTS!