Sellout for Rangers’ home opener
‘Calculated risk’ for sellout of 38,238
Susanna Frare said her family decided to take a “calculated risk” attending the home opener of the Texas Rangers, the first major U.S. pro sports event to approach capacity in a stadium since the coronavirus shutdown more than a year ago.
The crowd of 38,238 at Globe Life Field was announced as a sellout for the game against Toronto on Monday. The retractable roof was open on a 75-degree day with 15 mph winds.
“Since it’s at full capacity, that was something that we gave a lot of thought about,” said Frare, holding one young child with another sitting next to her at a table behind seats in the upper deck in left field about two hours before the game.
“But since masks are required and we’re doing our part and we know that the ballpark is doing their part to keep everything clean and sanitized as much as possible, we just thought it was worth it to come on out here,” she said.
The Rangers gained national attention with their announcement last month to make all tickets available for the home opener, drawing criticism from President Joe Biden that it was a “mistake” and “not responsible.”
The club’s decision came not long after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the state’s mask mandate and cleared businesses to operate normally. The Rangers said masks were required.
Frare wasn’t going to miss this chance to see the game.
“It’s opening day,” she said. “We’ve never had an opportunity to go to an opening day. We just felt like it’s the kind of time to get back out there. It’s a calculated risk. But something that we wanted to do, a fun experience.”
It was definitely the closest thing to normal in pro and college sports since mid-march last year, when college basketball shut down the same day MLB called off spring training.
This was the first chance for Texas fans to see their own team in a game that counted — many came to the playoffs last year just to see the $1.2 billion stadium and because they missed baseball.
Many other things were normal as well, including the patches of empty, sunsplashed seats that were common for many previous home openers in Texas.
Fans could be heard clearly singing the national anthem, slugger Joey Gallo got a loud ovation during pregame introductions and all the concession stands were open.
In the second inning, Toronto’s Marcus Semien and Cavan Biggio connected on back-to-back homers, prompting fans to pressure the pair who snagged the souvenirs to toss the balls back onto the field. Neither caved to the peer pressure.
“I’ve been excited for this park from the minute they announced they were going to build it,” Rangers fan Alex Posani, 23, said.
“I watched them build it whenever I went to games over there,” he said, referring to still-standing Globe Field Park, visible across the street through the huge glass windows above left field.
Infectious disease experts are mixed in their view of the Rangers allowing full capacity at this stage of the pandemic.
While New Jersey-based medical anthropologist Theresa Macphail called it “misguided,” former White House medical staff member Dr. William Lang said lower rates of infection of increasing rates of vaccination in Texas give the decision more credibility.
“I know people will disagree with me,” said Lang, who served in the President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrationsf. “Reasonable people will disagree on this one as opposed to some of the times we’ve been with this where reasonable wouldn’t disagree, they would just say, ‘No, this is stupid.’ ”
Mask compliance was strong on the main concourse before the game, but had dropped to about 50 percent by the middle innings. Ushers and security personnel weren’t seen stopping fans walking without masks.
The latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fully vaccinated people can mingle indoors with others who are fully vaccinated. But the CDC says everyone should wear masks in public.
Tarrant County, where Globe Life Field is located, and neighboring Dallas County both have about a 20 percent rate of fully vaccinated people, with about 30 percent partially vaccinated.
Long lines lacking social distancing required fans to wind through the concourse, and they were sometimes shoulder-to-shoulder in bottlenecks.