It’s been an amazing year for the Texas Rangers: besides fighting it out with the New York Yankees for the best record in baseball, the team has already set one attendance record and on pace for another.
The Rangers are just a half game behind the Yankees for the best record in baseball (57-38 for the Yanks; 56-38 for the Rangers), but are ahead of New York in a crucial metric: the Rangers are outdrawing the Yankees on a per-game basis. An average of attendance of 43,607 is good for second in MLB, behind the Philadelphia Phillies.
Winning, of course, will bring a lot of casual fans to the ballpark, through winning in and of itself won’t assume boffo box office: the Phillies lead MLB in attendance, while the overachieving Orioles and White Sox are in the bottom half of the attendance standings. What the Rangers have done, it seems, is convince fans of a commitment to winning: the team hasn’t been afraid to make big moves (letting C.J. Wilson go, committing big bucks to Yu Darvish).
And the Rangers are reaping the rewards of this effort. The team has already sold out 27 games this year, breaking the record of 21 sellouts set in 1994, when Rangers Ballpark in Arlington opened. The team should draw its 2-million fan this season tonight with the Boston Red Sox in town, and going above a total mark of 3 million should be doable. It’s a good time to be a Texas Rangers fan.
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