Rays-Rangers Wild Card Game 1 generates lowest MLB postseason attendance in more than 100 years

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The Tampa Bay Rays hosted the Texas Rangers to kick off the MLB postseason on Tuesday afternoon, but it was not the raucous crowd usually found in a playoff atmosphere. 

The home of the Rays, attendance at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, has been notoriously low compared to other MLB teams for years. It is an outdated dome that already has plans to be left in 2028. 

However, while it does not come as a surprise that a Tuesday afternoon game at "The Trop" was not filled to the brim for the postseason bout, the number on the attendance sheet was historically bad. 

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A general view of Tropicana Field during Game 1 of the Wild Card Series between the Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Mike Carlson/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

There were just 19,704 fans in attendance to see the Rays fall to the Rangers, 4-0, and the Game 1 crowd was the lowest attendance for a postseason game since Game 7 of the 1919 World Series in Cincinnati, per The Athletic. 

This record is obviously excluding the 2020 shortened MLB season, which had only a select group of fans present for postseason play at various locations. 

RANGERS' JORDAN MONTGOMERY SHUTS DOWN RAYS TO TAKE GAME 1 IN WILD CARD SERIES

MLB announced that the 2023 regular season saw total attendance of all 30 MLB ballparks hit 70,747,365 fans, which was a 9.6% increase (more than 6 million) from the 2022 regular season. 

The Rays, though, had 1,440,301 fans in attendance for its 81 games at The Trop, which is an average of 17,781. That was 27th in MLB. 

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