As spring training winds down, we’ll be looking at the winners and losers of 2011. The first big winner of 2011: the Minnesota Twins, who set a Florida spring-training attendance record at Hammond Stadium.
The Twins drew 129,453 fans to 16 games at Hammond Stadium this spring. It’s a record for fans attending spring Twins games in Florida. But it’s not close to what MLB considers to be the spring-training attendance record for the Twins.
MLB and the state of Florida each maintain their own list of spring attendance statistics: MLB includes all exhibition games, while the state of Florida counts only games played in Florida. As you’ll recall, last “spring” the Twins played two sell-out exhibition games at Target Field as a warm-up for the regular season. Those games pushed the Twins’ spring attendance mark to 170,497. That’s the record, per MLB.
So the record is a record, with an asterisk.
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