Lee MacPhail, who had a huge impact on the game of baseball as a front-office executive and president of the American League, passed away last Thursday. He was 95. MacPhail began his baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s and then moved to the New York Yankees, joining his father, Larry MacPhail, in […]
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2012 Major League Baseball Attendance
Our last attendance summary of 2012: here we rank the 30 MLB teams by average, with some surprises and some disappointments on the year-to-year front. Here’s the final tally for attendance this season for Major League Baseball teams. We list both the total attendance and the average per-game attendance. Our comparisons are based on the […]
Rain halts action at Rogers Centre
For the second time this season fans at a covered ballpark were hit with halted play, as Toronto Blue Jays action at Rogers Centre was stopped when rain poured through the open roof. The Blue Jays were hosting the Baltimore Orioles when rain hit the area in the sixth inning. Normally it’s no big deal […]
LA brings in Janet Marie Smith to oversee Dodger Stadium renovations
Janet Marie Smith, perhaps the most successful ballpark executive in the last 20 years, will attempt to work her magic at Dodger Stadium, as the team names her Senior VP of Planning and Development. The most important task for her: overseeing renovations to Dodger Stadium, a project promised by the new Los Angeles Dodgers ownership even before […]
New Yankee Stadium less intimidating? ESPN thinks so
The old Yankee Stadium was regarded by opposing players as one of the toughest places to compete. Today, it seems, the new Yankee Stadium is less than intimidating. In the old ballpark, fans could affect the outcome of a game, even when they lacked the ability to throw batteries from the right-field seats. Some well-placed […]
Winners and losers in the 2012 MLB attendance stats
MLB attendance is up 4.2 percent this season over last, but there are some surprising laggards at the box office this season — though it doesn’t seem to matter whether a team wins or loses. The convention wisdom on the MLB level is that it matters at the box office whether a team is winning […]
Orioles a solid draw in Sarasota
Luring the Baltimore Orioles to Sarasota for spring training has been a good investment for tourism officials, as fans are coming down to Florida from the mid-Atlantic region in droves. From the Sarasota Herald Tribune: Inquiries from that area grew 2.2 percent in 2009, 6.4 percent in 2010 and 7.3 percent last year during the […]
Spring-training games launch today
We have our first game of Spring Training 2012 today, as the Philadelphia Phillies host the Florida State Seminoles at 1:05 p.m. at Bright House Field. Let the games begin! Speaking of spring training: We’ll be in Florida next week and Arizona later in the month. Here’s the schedule for our upcoming Florida trip: March […]
Baltimore announces Oriole Park improvements for 2012
Twenty years after the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles today announced a series of enhancements dedicated to improving the fan experience at one of baseball’s best facilities. The biggest change: the center-field picnic area is being revamped. The emphasis won’t be on groups; it will shift to Oriole team history, […]
Orioles overhaul look once again
The Baltimore Orioles are going with a new look for 2012, replacing the ornithologically correct oriole logos with an updated cartoon oriole. The 2012 cartoon bird head is a new design, utilizing elements from both the 1970 and 1983 versions. It will replace the ornithologically correct bird on both the home and road caps. The […]
Duquette takes reins in Baltimore
Dan Duquette, an executive with a winning track record as GM of the Montreal Expos and Boston Red Sox, is back, this time as the new executive vice president of the Baltimore Orioles. “I am pleased to welcome Dan Duquette to the Orioles organization,” said Orioles Majority Owner Peter Angelos. “With an emphasis on developing […]
Crunching the 2011 Florida spring-training numbers
Attendance at Grapefruit League games at Florida spring-training facilities was slightly higher in 2011 than in 2010, but overall attendance been a little down since record numbers were set in the middle of this decade. A total of 1,571,196 fans attended Florida spring-training games this past spring. That’s higher than last year’s tally of 1,427,627 […]
Remembering Memorial Stadium’s tomato patch
It must have been fun covering the Baltimore Orioles in the 1970s: the team had some characters on the payroll, including groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone, who managed to cultivate a crop of tomatoes every summer at Memorial Stadium while embroiled in a mostly friendly feud with O’s skipper Earl Weaver over who had the best […]