Rangers drop home opener before record crowd
ARLINGTON, Texas — Steven Matz sensed the buzz from fans when warming up before his Toronto debut, then helped the Blue Jays ruin the home opener for the Texas Rangers before the largest MLB crowd since the pandemic.
Rangers fans didn’t have much to cheer about, other than just finally getting to see their team play a regular-season game in the retractable-roof stadium that opened last year.
Marcus Semien and Cavan Biggio hit back-to-back homers early for the Blue Jays and Matz struck out nine while allowing only one run over 6 1/3 innings in a 6-2 win Monday.
“It was definitely cool, that extra little adrenaline warming up and getting into the game,” Matz said. “It was fun. It felt really good to have fans in the stands.”
The Rangers announced a sellout crowd of 38,283 for their 50th home opener in Texas, the second in $1.2 billion Globe Life Field that has a listed capacity of 40,518 — the announced attendance doesn’t include complimentary tickets. They played all 30 home games in the stadium’s debut season without fans last summer.
Major League Baseball allowed about 28% capacity for the National League Championship Series and World Series games that were played there exclusively last October, with the largest crowd being 11,472. The Rangers said last month they would allow full capacity after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that allowed business in the state to operate at 100% capacity.
“It felt like a real game. It felt like back to the old days when we had full capacity,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said. “Was hoping we’d see how loud our stadium got if we gave them something to cheer about. Unfortunately we didn’t do that.”
Toronto, 3-1 for the first time since 2015, was ahead 4-0 in the second. Biggio went deep to right after a two-out, two-run shot by Semien off Texas starter Mike Foltynewicz (0-1).