Whole new ballgame as fans return
A’s, Giants welcoming back home crowds, socially distanced, for ‘semi-normal’ season
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
But thank goodness, what we were missing is coming back.
When the Oakland A’s open their season at the Coliseum tonight and the Giants in San Francisco next week, they’ll play in front of a home crowd for the first time in 18 months.
Yes, there were fans at spring training in Arizona, but having the home ballpark filled with hometown fans? That’s special.
And no one — not the managers, players, media or even the fans themselves — knew how special it was until it was gone.
“It’s something we all took for granted a little bit and didn’t realize how much we need the energy and fans in the stands,” A’s third baseman Matt Chapman said Wednesday. “I’m so excited to have them back out there and play a semi-normal version of baseball.”
The crowds will be
smaller than normal because of social distancing. The Giants can bring in roughly 8,000 people to Oracle
Park. The A’s, even in their cavernous stadium, will max out at roughly
12,000 for now.
But it’s that bit of “seminormalcy” that shines through.
Every new baseball season brings with it a sense of hope and optimism. What else could happen when you combine the warmer weather of spring and the possibilities of a 162-game season?
But now, the (hopefully) impending demise of COVID-19 is coming along for that ride.
Is baseball’s popularity dwindling? Undoubtedly. But the game is still an integral part of Americana, and I have a feeling that the classics are going to get a lot of run over the next few months.
It was necessary for the stands to be empty last year. Baseball was the first sport to resume play without a bubble. There
were issues — some teams had to miss whole weeks of play because of positive COVID-19 tests — but there was a World Series in October.
But it was a shame that the A’s, who won the American League West for the first time since 2013, had to celebrate that accomplishment on their own.
And while the Giants might not have been all that good last year, they were interesting. For the first time in half a decade, they were not one of the worst offensive teams in baseball. In fact, they were one of the best-hitting teams in the game. There were points in 2020 where that ballpark on the water would have been rocking.
The cardboard cutouts were nice, but they didn’t exactly root, root, root for the home team.
We’ll see if fans can make up for missed opportunities. Both teams should give them plenty to cheer this season. The Giants
expect to take a step toward playoff contention. The A’s are capable of defending their A.L. West title.
Of course, there were positives to not having fans. For instance, there were no hecklers on the road (or, during slumps, at home). But the negatives of the empty, soulless ballparks far outweighed them.
By the end of a truncated 2020 season, players were tired of having to manufacture energy out of nothing, of having to watch what they say in the dugout because that umpire who made the bad call was definitely going to hear them. The empty stands might have started last season as no big deal — a necessary quirk — but that tide quickly turned. By the end of the season, players were begging for fans. And even though full houses are still a ways away, now that some fans are coming back you can bet that no one will complain about those hecklers for a while.
“It’ll mean so much for us to have fans in the stands,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said in early March. “I think universally we feel more supported, more engaged, more excited when our fans are behind us. Obviously, we have a job to do no matter what the surroundings are, but San Francisco Giants fans make our games better.
“We want to share this experience with the fans. In some ways, we feel like the game is not fully the game without our fans around. It kind of feels like we’re in a partnership with them, so we feel like something is missing when they’re not in the stands.”
They’re not missing anymore.
I don’t know if the new normal will look anything like the old normal, but I do know that baseball isn’t going anywhere. And with more vaccine shots in arms, we could have 30, 40, 50 thousand fans in the seats by the end of the season.
And that’s something to cheer.