Tag: fans

Is building a new park going to help attendance?

Athletics Nation has a interesting post about what exactly happens to attendance to MLB ballgames after the team builds a new stadium.  The results aren’t what you might suspect or even necessarily consistent. 

Not surprisingly, attendance is up in the initial year but after that, the data is mixed and in some cases, such as San Diego’s PETCO Park and New York’s Citi Field, the figures drop drastically.  Of course, many factors figure in to this… team performance, city demographics, but as Athletics Nation tries to point out, building a new stadium is not a cure-all for dwindling fan attendance. 

Giants’ victory elicits some nasty emotions

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Whoever said that Baseball is a microcosm of all that is America was probably right.  All you need to do is read a few of the countless forums out there tonight on the heels of the Giants’ World Series victory over the Texas Rangers.

Over at the MLB forums, you can find this gem:

BlueFan124 wrote:
You hippie losers can take the WS but tomorrow we take our COUNTRY back!!!!!!!
11/1/2010 10:58:16 PM
Woah!  That’s quite a stretch.  Next thing you know, they’ll be demanding that “the Freak” cut his hair.

MLB is taking attendance

Seventy-five years to one billion.

Twenty-one years to two billion.

Thirteen years to three billion.

What am I talking about? The amount of years it took MLB to reach these attendance milestones beginning in 1901. 

The milestone was the result of the 10,843rd person who passed through the Coors Field gates on Tuesday afternoon for the Dodgers-Rockies game.

Give or take a gate crasher or two.

What’s the Buzz? Vuvuzelas!

I promised myself that the word ‘vuvuzela’ would not be written on this blog anywhere.  Sounds too much like the private regions of a woman.  But the irony of this is too much to pass up.

First, the Yankees have decided to ban the razzy sounding horn popularized and yet hated at the World Cup from Yankee Stadium.  Rumor has it that one fan had one grabbed from him by security as he entered the Yankee-Philly game. 

Yet at the same time, the Florida Marlins will be giving away 15,000 similar horns, considered obnoxious by many, as part of a promotion Saturday night.  This may backfire on the Marlins. 

These horns won’t be exactly the same as the vuvuzelas we’ve been seeing (and most likely hearing) at the World Cup.

From the Palm Beach Post:

The horns to be given away before Florida’s game against Tampa Bay are similar to but not the same as the soccer horns, said Sean Flynn, the Marlins’ vice president for marketing.

"They’re not as buzzing as vuvuzelas, but they’re loud,’ he said.

I’m sure as usual, Major League Baseball will have to come down with an edict, making a policy in horrendous detail, what is allowed and not allowed in MLB parks resulting in more security issues at parks. 

Astros fan goes to a better place

This story is a bit of a tear-jerker.  Sister Damian Kuhn, a Catholic nun as well as a devout Astros fans, passed away at the age of 89. 

She certainly did have a sense of humor:

“She was our No. 1 fan, and she always took it personal,” recalled (Astros owner Drayton) McLane. He told her it was time to start praying.

After a long sigh, she replied, “Drayton, my knees are bloodied. It’s going to take more than that!”

Four Fidelity employees fired because of fantasy football league

The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports on a rather shocking story with some relevance to us baseball fans.  Four middle-management employees were terminated from their positions at Fidelity Investments’ Westlake, Texas office because they were in a fantasy football league.

Some points need to be clarified:

1.  The specified reason these four men were fired was that they violated the company’s gambling policy.

2,  Cameron Pettigrew, the main point person of the fantasy league who has worked for Fidelity for over 2 years, says the league was careful about not using company email to facilitate the fantasy league.  

But again, Fidelity’s big beef was the gambling issue.

3.  Pettigrew pointed out that the gambling policy was “poorly communicated” to employees.  Since management was known to engage in leagues themselves, there seemed to be mixed messages.

4.  Most importantly in my mind, there were no warnings given and no less stricter penalties meted out before the four employees were let go.

Pettigrew DID say company resources were not used but Fidelity found out when one employee used a work IM to message someone else and mentioned the league.  That’s how they found out about everything. 

There are always two sides to every story (let’s face it, I’m sure there was some talk of the league during company time) but still, I’d like to hear Fidelity talk their way out of this one.

Assuming that Fidelity is being sincere and that the true reason for terminating the employees was because of gambling (it IS the Bible Belt, after all), it does seem pretty invasive, heavy handed and uncompromising (most employers I would think would issue a warning to a otherwise productive employee).

What are your thoughts?  Does your workplace allow fantasy leagues or “friendly” sports pools of any sort?

Bronx considering ‘Jeter Bridge’

Bronx officials have confirmed that they are considering naming a 512 foot bridge after Derek Jeter.  Which prompted this rather ‘ugh’ comment from Angela Montefinise of the NY Post:

Big Apple women may soon be able to take a ride on Derek Jeter — the bridge, that is.

As a commenter to her article notes, what happens if he somehow ends up on the Red Sox?  Yeah, yeah, Yankee fans, he’s Mr Pinstripes.  Don’t forget, he’s a businessman first and foremost.  Remember, Johnny Damon took the reverse route.

Good luck on the bridge thing New York fans.  And have fun, ladies.

(via Circling the Bases)

Howard HR ball back in hands of owner

After being bribed with cotton candy, the kid finally gets her due. 

That’s how the story goes.  Jennifer Valdivia, a 12 year-old girl who caught Ryan Howard’s historic 200th homerun ball was ushered to the Phillies’ clubhouse to exchange it for another autographed one, given some cotton candy then sent on her way. 

With help of attorney Norm Kent, she’s got the ball back now. 

"The Philadelphia Phillies’ team representative, knowing not only the historic value of that baseball, but its financial value, sent a team representative to Marlin security to retrieve young Jennifer from the stands," Kent said. "And she was there, 12-year-old Jennifer, with her 15-year-old brother, neither of the age of majority, offered her some cotton candy and a baseball worth 100 bucks in exchange for one that was worth thousands."

Kent knows marketing too.  He put this You Tube video up surreptitiously to talk about the resolution of the case of the 12 year old girl.  But let’s face it, it’s good PR for his law firm too.

 

 

But good on the girl, though.  She’s got her ball back. 

Dodgers beat the Yankees!… in attendance

2009 can be known as the year that the Dodgers toppled the Yankees… at least in attendance figures. 

For the first time in six years, the Yankees didn’t lead the majors in total yearly attendance.  They came in second.  The top honor goes to the Los Angeles Dodgers who had 3,761,661 go through the turnstiles at Dodger Stadium.

Number 3 shouldn’t be a big surprise.  Given their World Championship status and relatively large market, the Philadelphia Phillies grabbed that spot.

As for Chicago teams. the Cubs ranked sixth and the White Sox came in sixteenth in 2009.

Overall, Major League Baseball had a slight downturn in attendance from 2008 (6.6% less according to MLB.com) but with an attendance of 73,418,479, MLB is spinning it that this year is the fifth most attended year all time.  Yay, Baseball.

For those attendance stat geeks, The Biz of Baseball does a good job of breaking it all down for us.  Their pdf looking back at this past decade of MLB attendance team-by-team is quite detailed.