Please don't let me be trendy.

As it turns out, I'm a bandwagoneer. For the third consecutive season, minor league baseball has set all-time attendance records. What gives?

41.7 million people attended (or bought tickets for) ballgames of the 176 affiliated teams, including Mexican AAA teams. The Pacific Coast League did the best of all with 7.4 million fans.

The Monterray team in the Mexican league WINS! for highest fan attendance with 989,454. In the US, Sacramento's River Cats drew the mostest with 728, 227. That number seems low to me, but okay, if you say so. The River Cats also win the prize for the Five Millionth Minor League Team Called the Something "Cats".

The IL drew 6.4 million fans. A million less than the PCL. But think about it: in mid-April, would you rather be at a ballgame in Round Rock, Texas or Buffalo, New York? So shut up, Sunny McDryweather.


I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the popularity of the minors and the decreased popularity of the majors. (I'm pretty sure MLB is slipping). I can only extrapolate from my own experiences.

I'd like to assert that AFFORDABILITY is the number one reason. If you have, say, two kids in the 3-12 age group, it just makes more sense to cheap it up. Most six year olds aren't smart enough to realize the difference. (HA! Take THAT,six-year-olds!)

And you know those people that just don't go to Boston? Like, they won't fly out of Logan because, "I'm not driving into BOSTON, stupid!" Or if they DO go, they pick up the Attleboro-Stoughton commuter rail? I do that sometimes. You know they love going to places like S/W-B rather than Philly, or Lansing rather than Detroit, or possibly Pawtucket rather than Boston. Note to Fodor's: thanks for describing McCoy as a gritty park in a gritty town. You've totally amped my street cred.

I don't have much to say about mascot races and sumo wrestling and other between-innings shenanigans, except that it probably doesn't hurt.

So it looks like instead of being a MLB dropout, I'm but one of millions who had the same exact idea. I can't wait to go to my first PCL game, either.