The following picture appeared in last week’s issue of The Sporting News with the caption “Yes, this is an actual picture from a Florida Marlins game”. Even with that caption, I thought it was a joke. Maybe it was a picture of batting practice, or of some special event (a school field trip, maybe?) and the Sporting News guys were just being funny?
Come to find out, they were being serious. It’s an actual picture from September 12th, 2007, when the Marlins hosted the Washington Nationals. Florida won 5-4 in 12 innings, and this page about the game at Yahoo! News says that “[t]here were about 400 fans on hand when the game started Wednesday afternoon and the announced attendance was 10,121. The Marlins have the smallest total attendance in the majors.”
400 people? That’s sad. Even sadder? Ushers wouldn’t allow people to move up to better seats, even though there were thousands of empty seats available.