As you probably well know by now, the Marlins and Braves squared off yesterday under the scorching hot Florida sun in front of hundreds of fans. Yes, that's incredibly pathetic. But just how pathetic was it? Marlins reliever Joe Nelson guessed there were 418 fans in attendance during the game. He was only slightly off. There were 600. And it was so hot that Bobby Cox got himself ejected in the fifth inning, presumably so he could get into the air-conditioned locker room.
Even more hilarious than the pathetic attendance numbers was the fact that the Marlins boldly announced that they had sold 11,211 tickets for the game. Right.
Of course, what do you expect? Florida isn't exactly well known for their baseball fans. The Tampa Bays Rays are in first place in the AL East and can barely draw 20,000 fans per game.
Now, the real question about this game is pretty straightforward. Was it the worst attended MLB game ever?
As you can probably guess, the answer is no. But I bet you'll never guess how many people showed up to the worst attended MLB game ever.
The answer: 23.
No, that's not a typo. That's 23, as in 23 people once the attendance at a real, live MLB game. And it happened back on September 8, 1916.
That's pretty incredible. We used to have more than 23 fans at T-ball games I played in when I was still occasionally wetting my pants. Although granted, that was much more entertaining to watch.On September 8, 1916, the New York Yankees came to Philadelphia to play the hapless Athletics. The fans sitting in Shibe Park for the rain-delayed game were outnumbered by the men in uniform. In fact, when the Yankees were at bat, they had more players on the bench than fans in the seats. After an 8-2 win over the Yankees, for the only time in major league history, a team was two games back for every fan in attendance. 46 games back of the first place Red Sox and an announced attendance of 23.
Post Script: The 23 brave fans saw another record that day. Philadelphia outfielder Wally Schang, a switch-hitter was the first major leaguer to hit home runs in consecutive at bats from different sides of the plate.
Fans masquerading as seats [Extra Bases] via [Deadspin]
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