Baseball to let about 11,500 fans Into NLCS & World Series games
Fans can take themselves out to the ball game for the first time this season during the NL Championship Series and World Series at new Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Major League Baseball said Wednesday that approximately 11,500 tickets will be available for each game. That is about 28% of the 40,518-capacity, retractable-roof stadium of the Texas Rangers, which opened this year adjacent to old Globe Life Park, the team's open-air home from 1994 through 2019.
“Any time there's fans in the stands there's maybe a heightened sense of, this is a real game and it might raise everybody's play,” said Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who lives in the Dallas area during the offseason.
The World Series is being played at a neutral site for the first time in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It has not been played at one stadium since the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Browns at Sportsman's Park in 1944.
Some of the seats will be included in presales for Texas Rangers season ticket holders on Friday and registered users on Monday, and others are set aside for MLB and players.
MLB spokesman Matt Bourne said the vast majority are expected to be sold to fans.
Tickets are priced at $40250 for the NLCS and $75-450 for the World Series, lower than in recent years, and 10,550 seats in the regular sections of the ballpark and 950 in suites will be sold in “pods” of four contiguous seats. Tickets are all digital and will be sold for individual games rather than in series strips.
Each pod will be distanced by at least 6 feet and a checkerboard pattern will be used, with alternating rows of seats in the middle or at the ends. Unsold seats will be tied back.
No seats will be sold in the first six rows within 20 feet of the field, dugouts or bullpen. Fans will not be allowed to the lowest level, which is reserved for MLB's tier one personnel, such as players and managers.
Masks are mandatory for fans except while they are eating or drinking at their ticketed seats. Concessions and parking will be cashless, and the team's concessionaire, Delaware North, is planning wrapped items.
The NLCS is scheduled on seven straight days from Oct. 12-18andtheWorldSeriesfrom Oct. 20-28, with traditional off days between Games 2 and 3 and Games 5 and 6, if the Series goes that far. The Division Series, League Championship Series and World Series all will be played at neutral sites because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It would be an adjustment, but it would be so welcomed by everyone,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Teams that get to that situation and have fans, it's going to be pretty cool.”
After drawing 65.5 million fans during the 2019 regular season, MLB played the pandemic-shortened 2020 regular season entirely without fans. For the first time since spring training was interrupted on March 12, club employees and player families were allowed to attend first-round playoff games this week.
While Texas is allowing up to 50% capacity at venues, MLB did not anticipate having government permission for fans to attend postseason games at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles or Petco Park in San Diego, where AL playoff games are scheduled.
Other than 1944, the only times the World Series was held at one site came in 1921 and 1922, when the New York Giants and Yankees both played home games at the Polo Grounds. Yankee Stadium opened in 1923.