Only 974 People Showed Up To Watch A Major League Baseball Game On Monday

Photo: David Madison (Getty Images)

Roughly 9.5 million people live in the Chicago metro area, but only 0.01 percent of them decided to show up to Monday’s Rays-White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Or in other words, it’s roughly the same percentage of people who actually believe Lil Wayne is “gifted.”

According to Bleacher Report, the paid attendance announced at Monday’s 5-4 Rays victory was 10,377, but if you believe that many people actually showed up to watch the game in person, well, then you’re also likely to believe that I have a 18-inch hog. The real attendance for Monday’s game? You guessed it – 974.

Here’s what that looked like from WGN’s press box:

To be fair, here’s what the field looked like a few hours before first pitch. Nice touch by the scoreboard operator:

Of course, a lot has to go wrong for less than a thousand people to take in a Major League Baseball game. Weather obviously plays a huge factor, but don’t count out what completely gutting your roster of talent can do. I mean, outside of Jose Abreu, can you name three or four other players wearing a White Sox jersey this year? And in the case of Tampa Bay, well, we were unaware that they still had a Major League ball club.

Thankfully for White Sox brass, the temperature jumped from 39 degrees to 47 for Tuesday’s game against the Rays. Let’s see how many people came out for that one:

So just what can the White Sox do to get people in the seats at Guaranteed Rate Field in 2018?

At least this guy had a good time (sort of): Baseball Fan Loses His Very Pricey Nachos But At Least Now He’s Gone Viral

Well, winning a game in front of the two or three people who are showing up now would be a good start. So far, Chicago is the only AL team that hasn’t won a home game. I’d also recommend lowering beer prices to two bucks. I mean, at least then you’d have all of the the South Side drunks in attendance, and everybody else would come to watch them either fight each other or run onto the diamond.

Either way, at least maybe then they’d feel like they paid to watch a winner.