Quote:
Originally Posted by Goody
They got a nice new stadium.
Last year in 3 Rivers Stadium. 1,709,119
And then the attendance of the new stadium each year until now.
2,428,661
1,784,988
1,636,751
1,583,031
1,794,237
1,861,549
1,749,142
1,609,076
Ending with 1.4 you said?
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Honestly, if you're going to exclude any team with a new ballpark since the 1980's, then you're only left with the teams that do really well financially -- and Oakland and Minnesota. So let's look at Oakland. Stuck in a miserable market with an armpit of a stadium. They also drew 1.4 million this season. Only three times in the 1980's did they exceed that figure, and two of those times were during their heady Bash Brother dynasty days when they were the clearly the best team in the AL.
Minnesota, in their final season in the Metrodome, drew 2.4 million, a number they've only exceeded twice in their history (once the season after a World Series win and once during a World Series-winning season).
And that's it. There aren't any other small- or mid-market teams playing in the same stadium they were in the 1980's. One thing that says to me is that the era of salary imbalance has enabled all those poverty-stricken teams to pocket enough money to build new ballparks.