Ain't No Water

Before a single pitch has been thrown at 35th & Shields this season, the Sox have already sold 2.2 million tickets. That makes 2006 the Sox 5th highest attendance year in franchise history - not a small feat for a team that's been around over a century.

In millions, here are the Sox top years in home field attendance:

1991 - 2.9
1992 - 2.7
1993 - 2.6
2005 - 2.3
2006 - 2.2
1984 - 2.1
1983 - 2.1
1990 - 2.0

And it will porbably only take a month or two before 2006 passes 2005... I don't think the Sox will get a lot of 'walk-ups' anymore... so I'm not sure they'll pass that 1991 mark and get over 3 million. That would be quite a feat!

What does this mean for the fan?

Sox Park can hold, for 81 games, about 3.4 million fans. So that means nearly 70% of the seats for all games are already sold and gone. One look at the park's seating chart gives you a good idea of which seats are gone, and which remain. Do you really want to pay your hard earned money to sit in the 500 section? I can hear Bob Uecker now - "He missed the tag! He missed the tag!"

I guess I'm frustrated because I tried buying some group tickets (20) to a random wednesday game in may, and the "best available" were section 509 or some such crap. I tried different dates, again and again... same result.

What's worse, is for half priced mondays, it appears the lower deck is sold out as well. the last few seasons, the Sox had a policy of not putting those monday half priced tickets on sale until the friday before the monday game. No more I guess.

On the positive side, all the fair weather fans who hastily purchased season tickets with the sole purpose of obtaining World Series tickets, will have plenty to sell above the Dan Ryan. So obtaining a decent seat at a fair price is still possible, but maybe more of a hassle.