Sports

When it comes to supporting baseball, Twins fans are above average

Bob CollinsBob Collins Sep 11, 2013
17

For a few weeks earlier this summer, Twins fans were hearing it from sportswriters for not supporting the ball club. The attendance, it was noted, had tailed off at Target Field as the novelty of the new stadium wore off and the reality of a bad ball club set in.

Fans don’t have any responsibility to support a bad product any more than a car buyer has an obligation to buy a lousy car. Still, the criticism of Minnesota fans was unwarranted then and is today as the season winds down to its merciful end – the third straight 90-plus loss season.

Overall, Minnesota ranks 17th in league attendance, about the middle of the pack, which isn’t bad for a market where most of the audience is concentrated in the cities, and it’s a small one at that.

But operating under the theory that people will support a winner, where’s the credit for Minnesota fans who have bought tickets to a loser in numbers far outpacing the rest of the league.

Here’s the average number of fans per team’s win at an average ballgame as of today.

Team Attendance Wins Home games Average Attendance Att/Win
San Francisco 3,037,646 65 75                             40,502            623
Philadelphia 2,748,855 66 73                             37,656            571
Los Angeles Angels 2,784,405 68 75                             37,125            546
Los Angeles Dodgers 3,338,660 85 73                             45,735            538
Chicago Cubs 2,455,418 62 75                             32,739            528
Colorado 2,476,313 67 72                             34,393            513
Milwaukee 2,246,014 62 71                             31,634            510
NY Yankees 3,016,896 77 77                             39,180            509
St. Louis 2,926,343 84 70                             41,805            498
Minnesota 2,156,018 63 69                             31,247            496
Texas 2,724,159 81 70                             38,917            480
Toronto 2,239,289 67 70                             31,990            477
Detroit 2,689,547 83 71                             37,881            456
Washington 2,338,686 75 71                             32,939            439
NY Mets 1,835,339 64 68                             26,990            422
San Diego 1,972,793 66 74                             26,659            404
Houston 1,410,905 49 72                             19,596            400
Boston 2,499,334 88 72                             34,713            394
Chicago White Sox 1,535,651 58 68                             22,583            389
Cincinnati 2,314,946 82 73                             31,712            387
Baltimore 2,133,233 77 73                             29,222            380
Miami 1,404,698 53 73                             19,242            363
Arizona 1,851,565 72 71                             26,078            362
Atlanta 2,229,299 87 71                             31,399            361
Seattle 1,651,379 65 74                             22,316            343
Pittsburgh 1,910,167 83 70                             27,288            329
Kansas City 1,606,147 76 75                             21,415            282
Oakland 1,651,132 83 74                             22,313            269
Cleveland 1,426,120 77 74                             19,272            250
Tampa Bay 1,328,952 78 71                             18,718            240

The top six teams are all big-market teams who should be able to draw fans even with bad ballclubs (see Cubs, Chicago).

Then it gets interesting. Fans in Colorado (#7), Milwaukee (#8) and Minnesota (#11) are all supporting bad ballclubs.

Boston, a market whose fans get far too much credit, has the most wins and yet is back in the pack at #19. So is Atlanta (#25), which has the second-most wins. Granted Boston is a relatively small ballpark with high prices, but the fan support should be stronger given the quality of the team. Nobody notices that Minnesota supports its bad team better than Boston “supports” its good one.

The cautionary tale here are five teams at the bottom. Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Oakland, Cleveland, and Tampa Bay have more in common than just not being able to attract fans to their games. They’re all in the pennant race as of this morning and they’re all having good seasons. Pittsburgh and Oakland are going to the playoffs and Tampa Bay probably will.

Tampa Bay is easy to explain; it’s an awful place to watch a ballgame. Pittsburgh and Cleveland, however, have only one excuse. They have been bad for so long that the fans aren’t buying into one winning season.

Cleveland, in particular, has tried everything this year, including cheap beer, dollar hot dogs, and great fireworks after games. It hasn’t worked. Once you run a fan base away, it’s hard to convince them to come back.

The Twins would do to notice that.