Seeing People in a Crowd for a Baseball Game Again Felt So Damn Good

Watching Game 1 of the NLCS on Monday, I couldn't get over how weird it felt to see people in the stands again, even if it was just a little over 11,000. We've seen some socially distanced crowds in college football and a few in the NFL, but last night was the first baseball game to have paying customers in attendance since Spring Training.

And it was definitely a bit of a weird crowd, given that there were some Braves and Dodgers fans, but I'd guess most of the people there were just neutral observers from Texas. It was hard to really get a feel for the partiality of the crowd given the fact there was still artificial noise piped in — although Dodgers manager Dave Roberts remarked during his in-game interview that he thought there were more Braves fans.

But it could have been 11,000 people all rooting vehemently for L.A. and it still would have warmed my heart to see the stands of a brand new ballpark filled — well, as much as they can be — with people watching Postseason baseball. It made it feel more real. And that's not to say the season to this point has been in any way illegitimate, but seeing a Freddie Freeman home run ball careening towards fans for the first time in a year felt pretty good.

I keep moving my expectations for what ballparks and arenas will look like as we inch closer to 2021 because it doesn't seem like we'll be out of the woods anytime soon, but hopefully everything goes well in Arlington for the NLCS and World Series and other teams are able to have a blueprint for how to safely get fans in the building to watch baseball next season.