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Being a baseball fan in San Diego means you are A) Diehard, B) Fairweather, C) A fan of the visiting team.
That's all there is. What's diehard? You attend more than one game per season. Literally. The other two classifications are pretty self explanatory.
People also sometimes mock the Padres for not drawing well and others come right back and say, "Winners sell tickets", but what I found very interesting was this post on Fangraphs today showing the attendance figures thus far as a percentage of the stadium capacity.
The Padres are in front of eleven other teams when it comes to attendance as a percentage of capacity. Sure, those numbers might be inflated a bit with season ticket holders who don't show up and visiting team's fans, but be honest... That's going to happen just about everywhere. You don't think Camden gets loaded with Yankee and Red Sox fans when their teams are in town?
So that said, in terms of attendance by stadium capacity, the Padres (11.5 games out of the wild card) are currently in front of the following teams who's fan bases should be ashamed...
- White Sox (first place in their division)
- Atlanta (first wild card spot in the NL)
- Tampa Bay (1.5 games out of first and 1.5 games out of WC)
- Oakland (Tied with Yankees and Baltimore for WC spot)
- Baltimore (Tied for first with the Yankees)
The other six teams are probably what you'd expected (the AZ, KC, Houstons of the world). But it's crazy to me that those other cities can't get people to show up. At least in San Diego the fair weather fans show up when the going is good.
Though, now that I think about it, the Padres in 2010 had one of their best seasons ever and were just a little bit better in terms of attendance than they've been this year. The 2010 season, if you'll recall ended with more of a whimper than a bang.
But still... In my mind... I like to pretend that we're not doing so bad in terms of supporting our boys.