Please Stay Out Of The Ball Game

The completely stupid and counterproductive rioting in Baltimore, while not doing anything to make the cops stop fucking killing people for no reason, is resulting in an oddly historic Major League Baseball moment.

for the first time ever at least according to the Baseball Hall of Fame and MLB’s official historian John Thorn, a game will be played in front of a crowd of 0.

A wave of looting and rioting around Camden Yards forced the postponement of the first two games of the series and caused the Baltimore mayor to impose a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew. So baseball officials decided the only way to play the finale was to lock the gates to the public and move the starting time up five hours to 2:05 p.m.
“All of the decisions in Baltimore were driven first by the desire to insure the safety of fans, players, umpires and stadium workers,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Only after we were comfortable that those concerns had been addressed did we consider competitive issues and the integrity of the schedule.”

Those other 2 games will be made up during a doubleheader on May 28th, in case you were wondering. This weekend’s Rays Orioles series has also been moved to Tropicana Field, which will be kind of like this afternoon minus the part where you have to close the gates to keep people from showing up.

Speaking of things you were wondering, just what are the lowest attendance figures in history, anyway?

Since 1987, the lowest attendance has been 746 when the White Sox hosted Toronto at Comiskey Park on April 9, 1997, according to STATS. The New York Yankees’ home game against the White Sox on Sept. 22, 1966, had a listed attendance of 413.
Thorn said the smallest crowd for a major league game appears to be six when Worcester hosted Troy in a National League matchup on Sept. 28, 1882.

Six?

Oddly I have no memory of the Toronto game in question or the circumstances behind the low turnout, but I’ll bet it being winter in Chicago had something to do with it.

And I can’t help but notice how often the White Sox come up in this conversation. they were 2 of the 3 listed there, and now they’re half of a record that will never be broken. Go team?

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7 Comments

  1. This whole thing in Baltimore pissed me off so bad I was off Twitter for two days and hence missed a Stuff the Truck event tomorrow for Nepal so I have no time to order stuff off Amazon.

    Thanks a lot, organized riot people who think destroying your town is going to solve the problem no sane person denies exists.

    And when you fucked with baseball, that’s when I really lost it. I’m glad I’m not the only one who got mad at that even though the O’s are the enemy in our division. This is so unfair to the O’s, the White Sox, and yes, in a way, the Rays even though we get to play at home this weekend now. It’s totally throwing off everyone’s routines.

    And all because some people wanted to use a tragedy as an excuse to be destructive.

    Interesting attendance facts, btw.

    1. You’ll never convince me that rioting isn’t idiotic. It was idiotic in 1992 when I was 13 and watching mobs destroy L.A., and it’s idiotic now. Be angry. You have every right in the world to that. But breaking shit only gives ammunition to your critics and reenforces every possible negative stereotype. Just stop.

      They do a stuff a bus thing every year for the food bank here. I haven’t heard anything about something like it for Nepal. I should look into that.

      I liked the attendance stuff too. I’m a sucker for trivia like that.

      1. Not that this injury needed anymore insult, but here goes anyway. A friend and I were just talking about this this morning. when the shit originally hit the fan, the cops were the bad guys–and for good reason. Now? Arresting/otherwise disabling these morons would be doing the city a favour. So not only are they setting stuff on fire because why not, but they’ve just provided the police with an opportunity to redeem themselves. Not saying they’ll take said opportunity, but, you know.

        1. Absolutely. Disruption? Fantastic. Disruption via destruction? You’re turning people against a very worthy cause and making the villains into heroes by default.

  2. Two days ago I found myself losing all sympathy with the cause and that depressed me so much I went offline for two days. I don’t want to lose sympathy with the cause because I can’t believe it’s 2015 and we still don’t have fucking equality.

    Oh and on trivia, do you play Trivia Crack?

    1. I haven’t, but I’ve been meaning to grab the app and try it out. I take it you’d recommend it. Carin and I do watch Jeopardy and play along most nights though. Whenever I clear a category I celebrate like I just hit a home run.

  3. Yeah it’s a lot of fun. Some of the questions are like ok that’s dumb, but for the most part it’s just a fun way to compete with friends. I tried the free version first but got very sick of the ads and realized I liked the game enough to buy it.

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