There will be baseball in Baltimore on Wednesday, but Baltimoreans will not be able to attend.
As the city continues to brace for protests against the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, the Orioles announced that Wednesday’s game against the Chicago White Sox will be “closed to the public”.
No one will sit in any of the 45,961 seats of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, whose nostalgic touches make it among the most majestic ballparks in Major League Baseball. No one will retrieve any home runs belted onto Eutaw Street. The pit beef sandwiches will go uneaten.
The Elias Sports Bureau, which compiles baseball statistics, told the Guardian it had no way of determining if there was a precedent for two teams playing to an empty ballpark in over 100 years of professional baseball.
Santo Labombarda, an Elias researcher, said the record books measure attendance based on tickets sold, not fans who present their tickets at ballpark gates.
Accordingly, “it’s impossible to determine” if the Orioles-White Sox game will be unique in MLB history, Labombarda said.
But baseball’s official historian, tweeted “this will be a first.” The historian, John Thorn, also cited an 1882 game played to six people.
Yet an MLB official cited the difficulties in getting attendance figures from “games way back when” for providing a definitive answer, though the official added: “We’re not aware of any other instances.”
Orioles announcement regarding schedule changes pic.twitter.com/nwCDyqjzWs
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) April 28, 2015
An Orioles representative said the club was still determining on Tuesday whether the Wednesday afternoon matchup will be televised.
Orioles chief operating officer, John Angelos, signaled his support for the anti-police brutality protests in a series of tweets.
“The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, an ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the importance of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards,” Angelos said on Monday.
The Orioles, whose 2014 squad lost the American League pennant after getting swept by the Kansas City Royals, currently hold a 9-11 record. They entered Tuesday’s matchups 2.5 games behind the first-place New York Yankees in the AL East.
Tuesday evening’s Orioles-White Sox game is postponed.
