Red Sox to have fans at Fenway to start 2021

Lose Remerswaal

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Time for my annual post: why does MLB refuse to schedule the opening few series in warm weather cities or cities with domes?

Why have Baltimore playing at Boston while Tampa plays at Miami? Houston at Oakland? Texas at KC? San Francisco at Seattle? LA at Colorado? Arizona at San Diego? Atlanta at Philly?
Because Opening Day will sell tix, in normal times, but other April games just don't sell as well as summer and fall games during a pennant race. And every early April home game a team has is one fewer home game during more desirable times.
 

Yo La Tengo

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Because Opening Day will sell tix, in normal times, but other April games just don't sell as well as summer and fall games during a pennant race. And every early April home game a team has is one fewer home game during more desirable times.
I suspect that rationale is the reason, but, it seems like it could be dealt with by stacking the first 2ish weeks of the season in warm cities/domes, then the next 2ish weeks farther north, then all teams are on equal footing for the remainder of the season.

I guess one factor would be attendance on opening day vs. attendance at a team's home opener. For teams who sell out in advance, weather would not impact ticket sales on opening day, but, I think most teams don't sell out well in advance of opening day (which would mean that weather would influence the number of tickets sold).
 

PseuFighter

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Love surprising my friend with tickets he now can't use. Grumble, grumble, it's going to be cloudy and mid 40s at 2pm, grumble.
 

Ale Xander

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Time for my annual post: why does MLB refuse to schedule the opening few series in warm weather cities or cities with domes?

Why have Baltimore playing at Boston while Tampa plays at Miami? Houston at Oakland? Texas at KC? San Francisco at Seattle? LA at Colorado? Arizona at San Diego? Atlanta at Philly?
Agree with this. Detroit, Boston and the Chicagos should open on the road.

I'd prefer to have Patriots Day Weekend be opening weekend. Or maybe even cooler, have the Patriots Day game itself be OD. And then you can also have a little bit of OD weather hedging if you have Monday at 11AM and Tuesday at 7PM. Not 48 hours like you have now, but almost as good. How cool would that be to be Marathon during OD.

A little surprised with the postponement today. Is there an issue with the current grounds crew? Is it tradition to start at 2PM? Looks dry after 5.

In any case, go baseball! It will start back soon enough.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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Agree with this. Detroit, Boston and the Chicagos should open on the road.

I'd prefer to have Patriots Day Weekend be opening weekend. Or maybe even cooler, have the Patriots Day game itself be OD. And then you can also have a little bit of OD weather hedging if you have Monday at 11AM and Tuesday at 7PM. Not 48 hours like you have now, but almost as good. How cool would that be to be Marathon during OD.

A little surprised with the postponement today. Is there an issue with the current grounds crew? Is it tradition to start at 2PM? Looks dry after 5.

In any case, go baseball! It will start back soon enough.
First part (where to start the season) has been discussed above.

Why cancel today? Field will still be wet. Stands and seats will be wet. They have tomorrow available. They canceled it early enough that no one is already there. I think it's the wise choice.

Tomorrow and Saturday and clear and sunny. A bit cooler tomorrow than today (and Saturday) but definitely good April baseball weather
 

Yo La Tengo

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Agree with this. Detroit, Boston and the Chicagos should open on the road.
There are 15 stadiums that are either in warmer areas or have a roof: Seattle, Oakland, SF, Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Arizona, Texas, Houston, Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Toronto, and either Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, or KC. Conveniently, those 15 teams are split evenly between AL and NL teams.

I think the home opener (as opposed to opening day) would sell out for several of the northern teams (Boston, NY Yankees and Mets, Philly, Chicago Cubs and White Sox, St. Louis). Likewise, when the remaining northern teams are competitive, almost all have shown the ability to sell out regularly. So, the issue seems to be whether the current scheduling is worth it in order to boost ticket sales for a single game in a few northern cities with non-competitive teams?
 

Yo La Tengo

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As an example, in 2019, the Twins opened the season against Cleveland and drew roughly 69,000 fans over three games (with opening day outdrawing games 2 and 3 combined). A month later, they played three games against Baltimore and drew roughly 66,000 fans (more evenly spread among the three games). I think an argument could be made that teams in northern cities would sell the same number of tickets if they waited to have the home opener later in the spring.
 

Ale Xander

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About 20 minutes ago I heard it reported on Felger and Max that Fenway is opening to full capacity on May 29th.
Gonna be weird with Fenway 25% on May 28th, and then 100% on May 29th, vs. the Fish.
 

DeadlySplitter

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Sounds like season ticket packages (as in, season ticket buyers will be entitled to their seats again) will resume on June 8th.
 

Ale Xander

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Sounds like season ticket packages (as in, season ticket buyers will be entitled to their seats again) will resume on June 8th.
That makes sense. No home games frm 5/31 to 6/7 and the STHs already had a presale for 5/29 and 5/30.

Seeing them try to sell 75% of the stadium for the 2 games at full cap in less than 2 weeks will be interesting. Weekend, and the "bulls out of the pen" angle will help.
 

koufax32

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That place will sound like game 6 of the 2013 WS. I’ll definitely have it on the big screen with full surround sound.
 

Ale Xander

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Sam Kennedy expecting 20-25k fans per Sat/Sun game and jobs available!

https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/05/27/sam-kennedy-red-sox-not-expecting-anything-close-to-a-sellout-this-weekend/

"
Kennedy also warned that fans should prepare for long lines for concessions and restrooms. The Red Sox are only now trying to hire back all their seasonal employees.
“We also have some great summer jobs available,” Kennedy said. “Anyone 18 or over, come on down. Aramark is hiring. Lots of opportunities. Contact us. We’re getting ready to go for the summer.”
 

Max Power

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They really should have opened it up after the road trip. Those games were initially sold as limited capacity, so changing that a couple weeks out is a bit of a bait and switch. And it doesn't seem like they're ready to provide a good experience for a full house yet anyway. The extra 30,000 tickets sold for the two days probably wasn't worth the trouble.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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They really should have opened it up after the road trip. Those games were initially sold as limited capacity, so changing that a couple weeks out is a bit of a bait and switch. And it doesn't seem like they're ready to provide a good experience for a full house yet anyway. The extra 30,000 tickets sold for the two days probably wasn't worth the trouble.
I agree with you. Seems like they had a choice between upsetting folks for not immediately opening up the moment Gov. Baker allowed and upsetting folks who come to the park this weekend and don't enjoy the longer lines and fewer concession options, and they chose to go with upsetting the folks who come to the park. In terms of upsetting fewer people, they probably chose correctly.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Wish they were able to break down Worcester and Boston's rosters separately so we could see which one is more "to blame" for failing to reach 85%, since it's the combined group that has to achieve the threshold. Cora seemed to be suggesting that it was the guys who aren't with the big club holding them back as much as the stragglers in the Fenway clubhouse.
 

CarolinaBeerGuy

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Wish they were able to break down Worcester and Boston's rosters separately so we could see which one is more "to blame" for failing to reach 85%, since it's the combined group that has to achieve the threshold. Cora seemed to be suggesting that it was the guys who aren't with the big club holding them back as much as the stragglers in the Fenway clubhouse.
I saw it more as him giving cover for the guys on the MLB roster who are anti-vax. I’d love to see the list of guys who are holding out.
 

YTF

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I saw it more as him giving cover for the guys on the MLB roster who are anti-vax. I’d love to see the list of guys who are holding out.
Again, not judging, but why? Sheer curiosity (which I sort of get), or do we then want to know the reasons for those not being vaxxed? From there do we start forming opinions? Again I get the curiosity factor, but hate the idea of what it potentially leads to.
 

CarolinaBeerGuy

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Again, not judging, but why? Sheer curiosity (which I sort of get), or do we then want to know the reasons for those not being vaxxed? From there do we start forming opinions? Again I get the curiosity factor, but hate the idea of what it potentially leads to.
Mostly curiosity. It just makes me mad that some of these guys are dumb enough to be anti-vax.
 

joe dokes

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Not judging, but how and why?
How...MLB knows what %% is vaxed. Limit capacity to that.
Why? Be a leader on an issue of great importance. "Only 26000 allowed in the park" (made up number) gets more attention than " they can't play ping pong or go out to dinner."
 

OurF'ingCity

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YTF

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This seems like an oblique solution to the problem. The more direct way would be to say if you don’t get a vaccine, you don’t play. It is weird to me that MLB (and the other leagues) haven’t already instituted this policy.
Yeah, that's never going to work. Other than the lawsuits that will likely result from it and the union push back, how do you reconcile the fact that the league actually opted to field teams last season when there was no vaccine or players being allowed to play up until this point this season without being vaccinated. Do we "card" the fans coming into the stadiums where the opportunity to spread the disease is likely greater?
 
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Humphrey

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Unless you start having autograph sessions and the like, the odds on any "spreadable" contact between what the NCAA refers to as "Tier 1" personnel and fans is lower than low.
 

joe dokes

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This seems like an oblique solution to the problem. The more direct way would be to say if you don’t get a vaccine, you don’t play. It is weird to me that MLB (and the other leagues) haven’t already instituted this policy.
Oblique is a fair term. I think I'd say indirect, much like MLB's current indirect way is to incentivize vaccinations by loosening restrictions and effects of a positive on the team. I suspect that there might be CBA issues around no shot/no play decrees.