Last week I wrote that the Colorado Rockies – – despite their horrific record in 2025 – – were drawing above the league average in attendance. What I said there was:
“I don’t know what sort of marketing magic the Rockies have conjured up, but despite the despicable record by the Rockies, they draw more than the average attendance for all of MLB which is 29,200 fans per game. “
Well, I received a missive from “the reader in Houston” with more than a dozen “bullet points” that contribute to those attendance figures including:
“They are the only MLB team around for almost 1,000 miles with maybe one or two exceptions like KC or Phoenix, so people come from all over the area, including states like Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming; western Kansas, New Mexico.”
“The ballpark is in a very good location with pretty good weather once May comes around.”
“The ballpark has the best background sky in baseball.”
“It’s a hitter’s ballpark often with homers galore and chicks dig the long ball.”
“Denver is a great sports town period (try getting hockey or basketball tickets).”
“You might come up with more reasons, but the bottom line is no matter how lousy a team is, if it’s easy to get to a stadium in a great location and the price is right, why not?”
In addition, he passed along some historical data that I was unaware of:
“The Rox still have the MLB regular season attendance record of 4,483,350 (Bears Stadium sat over 70,000), which was established during their initial season in 1993, which will probably stand for a long time because most stadiums today, even if full every game with the exception of Dodger Stadium (56,000) could not hit the Rox record attendance.” [Aside: Did not recall the 1993 stats.]
“The franchise has broken almost every attendance record except for consecutive sellouts. Even when they stink, they were still in the Top 10 most years in attendance average, though in recent years their attendance due to losing records and no big-name stars has trended down into the middle of the pack.”
“The Rox do have relatively poor TV ratings because of their recent losing ways, and though Coors is a great ballpark, there is nothing really magical about it.”
And now you know … thanks to “the reader in Houston”.
So let me stay with the Rockies for one more item today. Last weekend the Rockies and D-Backs had a game that ended with the Rockies on the short end of a 13-6 score. The game was in Arizona, so those loyal Colorado fans were not able to see this one in person. As the D-Backs came to bat in the bottom of the fifth inning, the score was tied at 3-3. The first two Arizona batters produced routine outs. Paraphrasing King Louis XV of France:
“Après cela, le deluge …”
The next nine batters for the D-Backs hit safely. There were no errors or walks or catcher’s interference instances tossed into that stretch; nine straight batters hit safely. Those nine hits produced eight runs leading to the D-Backs comfortable margin of victory. Another stat from that game also explains that margin of victory; the D-Backs were far more efficient with their hitting on that day:
- D-Backs scored 13 runs on 17 hits.
- Rockies scored 6 runs on 16 hits.
Quick update here. The Rockies’ record this morning is 32-88 which projects to a final record of 43-119 giving them a “2-game lead” in the projection over last year’s woeful White Sox. The Rockies’ run differential is a staggering minus-326 and they could surpass the MLB record from 1932 of minus-349 for a season.
Moving on … I was sports grazing recently and ran across a Cards/Cubs game in St. Louis; that alone was enough to get me to put down the remote and hang around for a while. In addition to things happening on the field, what I noticed was the large number of empty seats in the stands in St. Louis AND the significant fraction of the people in attendance wearing “Cubs’ Blue” and not “Cardinals’ Red”. I made a note to try to explain this “aberration” as I labeled it.
Well, maybe it isn’t that much of an aberration after all. I have in my mind that Busch Stadium is filled to overflowing with people wearing red-and-white whenever the Cardinals take the field. The Cardinals were always at or near the top in home attendance and usually had the stadium at capacity whenever a big game or the rival Cubbies were on display. Not so in 2025 …
- The Cards average BELOW the MLB average home attendance in 2025
- The Cards average about 2500 fans BELOW the Rockies in 2025.
- In the NL, only the Reds, Nats, Pirates and Marlins draw fewer home fans in 2025.
The Cards have been in the playoffs in six of the last eleven seasons but have tended to make early exits once there. They won 100 games in 2015 but have only gone north of 90 wins twice since then. Back in “the teens”, the Cards home attendance was always more than 40,000 fans per game peaking at 43,712 per game in 2014. In 2025, home attendance is averaging only 28,767 which is a drop of 34.2% from that peak. Even more telling than those raw comparisons, is a peek at the secondary market for tickets to Cards’ upcoming games. What used to be a hot ticket – – something scalpers sold around the parking lots for three figures – – can now be had for as little as $25 on StubHub.
The 2025 Cards are 61-61 this morning, which is hardly an electrifying record, but the Cards are only 4 games behind in the race for the final Wild Card slot in the NL playoffs; these are not the woebegone Rockies even if this is a “disappointing season” for Cards’ fans. I have not been to the Cards’ park in person in decades, so I have no way to assess the “fan experience” at Busch Stadium, but I have difficulty accepting that it was a positive experience as recently as 2023 when the Cards averaged 40,013 fans per game and now in 2025 it is as pleasant as a root canal.
Finally, since today has been about baseball – – at least tangentially – – I’ll finish with this from Jim Bouton:
“Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………