When Josh Hamilton left Arlington to join the Rangers' rivals in Anaheim he stated that Arlington is not a baseball town. He was slammed by the Rangers' fan base for his comment. "How can you say things like that? You experienced the playoffs here for the first time in your career and The Ballpark was a mad house during those games," the standard fan would say. Or, "We love our Rangers and we're glad you're leaving after saying things like that." The rants went on and on with fans being offended by his observations. And I have to say that I agree with Josh.
Let me start off by saying that I've lived in DFW all my life and grew up going to and watching Rangers games. I'm a life-time fan. This town, however, is not. It is a football town. How can I tell this? How can I say this? Let's take a look at attendance for both the Cowboys and the Rangers from 2009-13. (I'll discuss the Rangers' 2014 attendance later. For 2014 the Cowboys stayed a top the league, but with the Rangers and Cowboys switching places by way of record, it's not as drastic a comparison, so I'll stay with the 2009-13 attendance analysis.)
Cowboys Attendance
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Rangers Attendance
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| Comparing direct numbers of total attendance, and average attendance
per game would be useless since Cowboys Stadium holds more people than
Rangers Ballpark, and they play fewer football games than baseball
games. That's why I went with the categories I did, so it's more of
a side-by-side comparison. The main thing that we have to look at is
the attendance compared to the winning percentage. The Cowboys have just
had their first winning season since 2009. And in every one of those five years,
the Cowboys led the league in attendance with over 100% capacity in
each of those five years. In those same five years the Rangers had
winning records and were never first in the league in attendance. They had
less than 90% capacity in each of those years, so there was still room
for greater attendance numbers despite record breaking totals. In the 2014 season, attendance, as I'm sure you could guess, was down for the Rangers from previous seasons. This could be explained by the Rangers poor performance on the field, third worst in the league (hello, early draft picks), due to a number of factors, mainly the injury bug. No, it was worse than a bug, it was an injury monster, but that's neither here nor there. Surprisingly though, despite being third worst in the MLB by way of record, they were ninth overall in attendance. "Ninth?" you may ask yourself. "Isn't that pretty low for our baseball town?" Well, not when you consider that all the teams ahead of them were playoff bound teams. "But you just disproved your own argument. If the Rangers were that high in attendance totals and were third worst in the league, people are still going to the games despite a bad team. Hello, Baseball Town, USA!" I'm sorry, did I say all the teams were playoff bound? I meant all but ONE team... That one team is none other than the Boston Red Sox. They placed sixth overall in attendance while posting a 71-91 record, four games better than the Rangers at 67-95, and placed dead last in the AL East. Boston has long been the quintessential baseball town with sellouts most seasons, even with poor performances on the field. So much so they had to add seating over the Green Monster in left field in recent years to try and satisfy demand. In 2014, even with coming in last in the AL East, Boston fans still were able to fill Fenway to 98.5% of capacity, third best in the MLB. The Rangers? They show up in the middle of the pack at only 68.3% of capacity. So if Arlington and the surrounding area is to be considered a baseball town, we should be matching the numbers of towns such as Boston, even during losing seasons. And the Ballpark is better than Fenway. Apart from the historical nature of Fenway, and it being tucked into a neighborhood, the stadium itself is terrible, so the fans aren't going for the amenities. They're going because they love the game of baseball, for better or for worse. The biggest example of Arlington not being a baseball town is that the Metroplex doesn't pay attention to the actual goings-on of the day-to-day games. For example, I went to a game at The Ballpark in late April this past season against the division rival Oakland A's. Considering the way the 2013 season ended, I would have thought the first time the A's came to town would be a large draw. That's on the team versus team match-up alone. This particular game also happened to have an amazing pitching match-up slated between rising young pitcher Sonny Gray and the Rangers' ace, Yu Darvish. A marquee match-up that should have drawn large numbers with just Darvish on the mound. However, this game, early in the season, when hopes were still high, the weather was beautiful, and the pitching match-up very promising, drew a whopping 28,548 fans! I was appalled when I walked into the stadium and saw the sea of empty green seats. "With all this game has to offer, this is the crowd that came out to see and experience it?" That game just confirmed for me what I already knew: Josh Hamilton was right, Arlington isn't a baseball town. Some say that the Metroplex is a fan base that follows winners. If the team wins then, the crowd will follow. As a rebuttal, I give you the Cowboys' attendance from 2009-2013 seen above. It's a football town. Even high school football draws well here, and in some cases better than the Rangers. I'm okay with the Metroplex not being a baseball town. I liked being able to buy Opening Day tickets without going through a lottery process, like before the playoff and World Series runs. I like being a die-hard fan of team whether they are winning or losing. It's fun for me being a part of something that not everybody knows about. Like some sort of secret club. The problem is this club is not secret, it's in the public eye. I'd like for everyone to be part of that club. Anyone can join. You don't have to go through some crazy hazing or ritual. There's plenty of room in the Rangers Republic and with the 2015 season right around the corner, now is as good of time as any to join. Pitchers and catchers report in February! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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