Crowd Pleasers: Rangers Annihilate A's In Front Of Sellout Crowd
The Texas Rangers celebrate after dismantling the last-place Athletics by a 14-1 margin on Saturday, May 30th.The latest victory in a gradually lengthening procession of victories against divisional rivals has now supplied the Texas Rangers with their most formidable advantage in the AL West standings since the conclusion of the 1999 regular season, with the second-place Angels now unequivocally reeling after sustaining losses in four of their last five games and consequently falling 5½ games behind the ballclub which can firmly establish itself as the predominant divisional presence by simply playing up to its capabilities over the next two weeks.
Eleven games above .500. Eleven. Of the five Junior Circuit teams which possessed the best record in the American League on the morning of May 31st each of the last five seasons, only one ultimately failed to win the pennant and reach the World Series -- that being the 2004 Yankees, whose seemingly assured trip to the Fall Classic was infamously thwarted by the Red Sox in historic fashion.
The implication here isn't so much one of post-season assurance as it is cause for increasing excitement amongst those whom comprise the Rangers' burgeoning fan base, which accomplished a rare feat as the Rangers stomped the Athletics into oblivion by a 14-1 margin on Saturday evening: the announced crowd of 45,325 was the Rangers' first 45,000-plus home contingent at a non-Yankees or non-Opening Day game since August 25th, 2007, when 47,977 witnessed a 5-3 Saturday evening triumph over the Mariners.
Texas now occupies the No. 14 spot for average home attendance in the majors and the No. 5 spot in the American League (27,296), a product of the fourth-largest increase in average home attendance in baseball; additionally, the Rangers have drawn nearly 80,000 more fans through their first 25 home dates of the 2009 regular season then they did during an identical timeframe in 2008, amounting to an attendance spike of nearly 3,000 per game -- or 12.6 percent, a tremendous improvement in light of the fact that (a) the spring semester has just now concluded for thousands of North Texas students and (b) average major league home attendance has plunged in excess of five percent thus far in 2009 even after accounting for the Yankees' and Mets' brand-new, lower-capacity shrines.
Winning begets stronger attendance totals, which in turn begets a more electric ballpark atmosphere from which the players thrive. More people following Rangers baseball engenders not only greater interest in the major league product, but more lucrative and diverse revenue streams in the form of heightened television ratings, additional sponsorships and greater merchandise/concession sales. And the infusion of more cash into the organization tangibly reinforces the wisdom behind the Rangers' strategic vision while supplying more capital for Texas to invest towards the procurement of both established major league talent and high-upside amateur potential.
Don't shun the bandwagon fans. Embrace them, much the same way that Andruw Jones -- whom I'm growing increasingly fond of, and not just because he's hitting .303/.443/.605 -- fondly embraced his manager in the dugout as Texas inched that much closer to a double-digit lead over the only team which presently appears capable of remaining in the dogfight for the duration.
Quick Hits: Left-hander Derek Holland is tenatively slated to make his next start at Boston on Saturday and is available to pitch out of the Rangers' bullpen today ... Struggling first baseman Chris Davis arrived at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington early on Saturday for some additional work with hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo ... Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram overtly contemplates whether the sale of the Rangers to David McDavid would culminate in team president Nolan Ryan leaving the organization.
2 Comments | in Analysis, Game Recaps, The Season
Reader Comments (2)
Don't get too excited over last nights attendance. It's not gong to be an everyday occurrence. There was a christian band concert yesterday which drew a ton of churches. The entire third deck was filled with them. In fact there were more casual fans, who just wanted to go to the game for the sake of going, than there were people that wanted to actually watch a first place team. Although attendance will get better, last night is not going to be a common thing.
I had to sit behind a bunch of annoying children who wanted to do the wave in the very first inning. One kid directly in front of me kept waving his foam finger, and I wanted to snatch in and rip into shreds.
Yeah it's annoying to have to deal with the disney-ness of the ballpark now. I live in ny now but grew up in dallas. citi field feels like a ball game while the ballpark in arlington feels like six flags with a baseball game going on.