09/29/26 06:48:00
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09/29 18:47 CDT Sparse crowd, empty seats greet .500 Astros for wild-card
opener vs White Sox
Sparse crowd, empty seats greet .500 Astros for wild-card opener vs White Sox
By KRISTIE RIEKEN
AP Sports Writer
HOUSTON (AP) --- The crowd at Daikin Park was surprisingly sparse as the
Houston Astros --- baseball's first division winner with a .500 or worse record
--- opened their Wild Card Series against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday.
Large swaths of seats, especially in the upper deck, sat empty while
right-hander AJ Blumbaugh delivered the game's first pitch at 4:10 p.m.
The bottom two levels were much more filled than the upper deck, but many seats
in the lower two decks were also empty.
The announced attendance was 34,011, in a park with a capacity of 40,963.
Major League Baseball has previously had trouble filling stadiums for some
afternoon games in the wild-card round. When Cleveland hosted Detroit last
year, the series opener started at 1:08 p.m. with 26,186 in attendance. All
three games in that series were played in front of fewer than 30,000 fans. The
Tampa Bay Rays drew just 19,704 for an ALWCS opener against Texas in 2023 that
started at 3:08 p.m., the lowest attendance for a non-COVID MLB postseason game
since the 1919 World Series.
Houston returned to the playoffs after missing out last year despite finishing
81-81. It's the first time a team made the postseason without a winning record
in a non-shortened season.
All those empty seats are a rare sight in a ballpark that is normally packed
for the postseason. And some of the fans that did show up weren't too happy
with the performance of the home team with boos raining down on the Astros in
the first and second innings as they fell behind 3-0.
The Astros averaged 30,519 fans per game during the regular season, which
ranked 14th in the majors.
Houston fought through an injury-plagued season to reach the playoffs for the
ninth time in 10 years. The Astros reached the American League Championship
Series seven straight times from 2017-23 and advanced to the World Series four
times, winning championships in 2017 and 2022.
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