Orioles to Play In Empty Ballpark and Be the Home Team on the Road
With the continuing unrest in Baltimore following the funeral for Freddie Gray, the Orioles decided to play their April 29th game against the Chicago White Sox in front of no one. This will break the all time record for smallest crowd at a major league game, which is believed to be 6 for a September 28th, 1882 game between long defunct Worcester (Mass.) and Troy (NY). This new record of zero can never be broken, only tied.
Over the weekend, Baltimore was supposed to host the Tampa Bay Rays. And they still will, sort of. The three game set was moved to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Even though that’s the Rays’ home field, the Orioles will be considered the home team and bat last.
There have been games moved before for various reasons. Toronto was supposed to host Philadelphia in 2010, but due to security concerns over a G20 summit being held in Toronto, those games were played in Philadelphia with Toronto being designated the home team. Weather has been a factor in some moves. After a huge snowstorm in Cleveland in April 2007, the Cleveland Indians-Los Angeles Angels series was moved to Milwaukee’s Miller Park, with Cleveland as the home team. The Houston Astros played a pair of games against the Chicago Cubs in Miller Park in 2008 due to Hurricane Ike. Although the Astros were the home team, the crowd was overwhelmingly Cubs fans , with Milwaukee being only 90 miles or so away. In one of those games, Chicago’s Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter:
We’re not sure why the Orioles didn’t just move these games to Washington. Those two cities are only about 40 miles apart and the Nationals are on the road through the weekend.
Update: Baltimore beat the White Sox 8-2. Maybe they should play in front of nobody more often.
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The Orioles certainly aren’t enjoying the success of some of their teams in the past, so my guess is not, but I wonder if the game was televised?
Yes it was televised. There are some highlights at mlb.com, including a player tossing a ball into the empty stands after the third out of the inning. I also saw a post on twitter where they played the guess the attendance game and all the choices were 0. I listened to a few innings on satellite radio and you could hear the sound of bats being placed in the bat rack. The announcers kept saying how weird the feeling was. A few fans outside one of the gates could actually see the game and cheers from them could be heard but there was no paid attendance and only baseball people, the media, and presumably security people were inside.
Great coverage! Insightful question about D.C., although my guess is that they didn’t want to take any chance on the protests growing and causing further delays. I hope I didn’t steal your line earlier; admittedly, I could not have resisted.