Expanding on the attendance topic a little:
We had crowds of 5212, 5384, and 4190 over the weekend. I was actually pretty disappointed in the Saturday crowd. It's typically 30-50% more than the Friday crowd.Considering the fact that were in the midst of a 5 game winning streak, it was UM, and the weather was great, I was expecting 7,000. It didn't happen.
There are a lot of popular opinions of why attendance is way down, besides wins and losses, and I think many play a part -
1. Economy.
2. Emergence of little league baseball travel teams.
3. Style of Cohen baseball and low excitement level.
4. Ron Polk purists.
5. Aging core fan base that can no longer attend and don't have kids that share the same passion and will use their seats.
6. Aging facilities.
Frankly, I think that many of these reasons, like economy, Polk, and facilities, involve a very small part of the MSU baseball community and are partly just excuses for lack of interest. None of the reason are anything that can't be overcome with winning. I think to really get back to a high attendance average, we are going to have to bring in the fences. As future hall of famer Greg Maddux once said "Chicks dig the long ball.", and guys love chicks. There needs to be that anticipation that a homerun is possible. It really makes the game more fun to the average fan. Now, it's a rare surprise if a hard hit ball doesn't get hauled in at the warning track.
I appreciate what Stricklin is trying to do, but I don't want DNF to turn into a bush league circus between innings. Yeah, it's kind of funny seeing some dizzy guy running with a money dress on, but let's not overdo it. There's only 90 seconds between innings now, so that's hardly enough time to do anything of substance. I don't think those kinds of things attract fans. I did like the fireworks show. That's always a crowd favorite.