With how much the Biscuits were excited about their win Thursday, they were also disappointed.
"Where are all the fans?" one inquired after a mere announced crowd of 3,216 watched Montgomery's victory over Huntsville.
The people that were at Riverwalk were enthusiastic, particularly after the benches cleared in the sixth inning. Michael Coleman was hit by a pitch in his first at-bat after a home run. In the eighth, Coleman came back to the plate and the crowd greeted him by chanting his name.
If, some players said, there had only been more fans.
8 comments:
I'm just as puzzled as the players about the lack of fans. There is high school football, but it will be worse Friday night. There is the concert under the stars, but I doubt that event really drew off the fans. I just don't get it...we are having a championship team with probably only one game left, and the hot weather fans of Montgomery are missing it! There is only two football teams in this town, ASU and the Maulers (I don't even know if they are still around). Why are people more interested in some teams so far away from this town, and will be playing for another 3 months, instead of the League Champions right here? I just don't get it. Never did, never will.
until Alabama and Auburn go 0 - 11 for next 100 years, this time of year will alway be football, no matter who play the game.
Just goes to show you what we've always professed: it doesn't matter if the team wins or loses. The experience is what sells. The team could finish in last or in first and the only things that will matter is how fun it is to come to a game and how good a job we did selling tickets.
Call of the game hit right on the head. The true baseball fans are the ones attending the playoff games. The Biscuits Management this year out did their selves. Great Job well done! It will be interesting to see if next will be as good or better than this year. Hey it been a great for three years, to me I hope it never slows down.
I'll also chime in that the Biscuits had a mere four days to sell tickets for Thursday's game. They had barely a week for last weekend's game.
They had more than six months to sell the regular season and group sales are a big chunk of the sales.
Hey, Call of the Game, I'm sure you've heard this plenty of times from some city residents -- Montgomery will only support a winner, so they better win.
I think another handi-cap was the glaring lack of support and hype by the local television stations. This is really sad when you know that one of them is a team sponsor. The Advertiser did its part (very well, I must add), but with such a short suspense between the end of the regular season and the playoffs was a perfect opprotunity to show what a television sponsor could do. If they can report the news everyday, imagine what they could do with a few days to really hype with commercials, TV coverage, and putting the playoffs AT THE TOP OF THE SPORTS SEGEMENT (not at the end as an "off the cuff remark.") I didn't see any interviews until the final night of the playoffs (for shame!). Now, about the local radio. Unfortunately, 1440 AM has such a weak signal, I have no idea if they hyped it or not. I didn't hear anything about the playoffs on any other station, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen...I just didn't hear anything. Do other stations ignore the Biscuits because they are not the flagship station? Who knows....In the end, the team won the championship and we as fans had a great year. As usual, the front office did an OUTSTANDING job to make us feel at home and did just an AWESOME job all the way around!
I've been told our coverage of the team is only because the Advertiser is a minority owner, which isn't true.
the attendence being "low" for the playoffs in minor league baseball is not endemic to just montgomery. over the years i have noticed that playoff games at all minor league levels have attendence figures much lower than regular season averages. A coupleof examples that stand out: we are all aware of the success of the lansing lugnuts; but they had a couple of playoff games where the crowds were less than a thousand. one of the really big boys, the round rock express, one of the top drawers in triple a only had about 4 thousand for their game the same night we had about 4000. of course, to be fair, they are located just outside of austin and texas and ohio st were playing that night. so even though we had "small" crowds, they were great crowds as far as enthusiasm. so, with fb season, along with the quick turn around as far as time to sell the tickets etc, things went as well as can be expected. oh, and by the way, congrats to all involved with the newspaper's outstanding coverage of the playoffs.
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