…they got nobody there to see the #2 team play the #4 team to decide who wins the series. This is the top NCAA baseball series in the country.
Technically it’s a 5500 seat park
Capacity to be 10,000 with standing and outfield
But I get what you are saying
They have to get the current baseball field out of the way of the upcoming football improvements
There is thought that Florida can get more people to the games with some of the changes the new park will implement. For instance, there are going to be chairback seats (I think they are all bleachers now) and most will be shaded. They also are changing the direction the stadium faces to put the sun at the back of spectators and hitters.
Baum would be packed including out where there ain’t no shade or chairbacks. They won the national championship last year and this is a sad turnout. It is also a great recruiting tool the next time we go against them to get a top recruit.
The rule is to aim the centerline from plate to center field at the northeast. How many major college or high school fields don’t do that? Dickey Stephens and the old Ray Winder were exactly northeast. Which direction does the Florida park face?
We don’t recruit against them, pretty much. We have one Florida kid (Cronin), and he’s from way out in the panhandle. They don’t have anyone from the places we recruit. Florida essentially doesn’t have to cross its state borders to load up on talent. About 90 percent of its roster is Florida kids.
As for shade, I was out in the Hogpen the day we beat MoState to win the super in 2015. I was roasting out there, and I sure could have used some shade. That was in June. Florida’s like that in February. Would I have been out there roasting for a Sunday game with LSU? Probably not.
McKethan Stadium is aligned the same way Baum is – northwest to southeast.
You may not have been there but if this series was at Baum, the Hog Pen would have been packed. JMVVVVVHO
If you look at our attendance numbers, no matter what time of year, generally Sunday is not packed (that MoSt super obviously the exception). Especially a noon start, which today was in Florida. Our best Sunday crowd this year was 7388 for USC; that ain’t packed. We didn’t have a Sunday game with Kentucky, so apples to apples comparison isn’t possible.
I’m hearing some pretty loud hog calls, so a whole lot of those fans are hog fans. I agree, Baum would be packed on a pretty day for a series like this.
I have been there 3-4 times and never seen a huge crowd…even in super regionals…
You can’t be serious. We are playing the #2 team in the country to decide the series and who leads in the SEC standings at noon local time on a Sunday and you think the place wouldn’t be full and rocking? Do you really think there would be the sea of empty seats behind home plate that we saw at Florida? Do you live in Colorado where marijuana is legal and widely consumed? 
I’m very serious. And I didn’t see any gaping empty areas at McKethan today. Their announced crowd was 4,500 today, which looked about right to me for a 5,500-seat park.
I’m not going to pretend that the fan interest in Gator baseball is the same as that for Hog baseball. It’s not even close. Florida averaged 4,463 last year for home attendance for a team that won it all (we averaged 8,359). But the lack of support didn’t keep them from winning the NC, which we haven’t done, or hasn’t kept them from going to Omaha 11 times, which is three times more than we’ve been there. They don’t need 15,000 for baseball any more than we need 100,000 for football.
Oh yeah, we had a Sunday series final last April with LSU on a beautiful day. Neither team was top 10 but both were top 20. Crowd that day at Baum was 9,016, which is very good for college baseball but certainly not packing the park.
Hogmodo, do you go to a lot of games at Baum? I honestly don’t know. You may be a season-ticket holder.
The reason I ask is that I go to several games each season, including Sundays sometimes. I can remember several big conference series over the years when we had decent crowds on Sunday but in no way packed the ballpark. Especially a game starting at noon. Church interferes with that time for many of our fans.
I tend to agree more with Swine that the Hogs have more fan interest than the Gators, but it has been rare to see the ballpark truly “packed” here on a Sunday. Even for a big series. It, of course, may simply come down to how each person defines what that means in terms of numbers.
Is this correct? I last was at Winder Field 60 years ago or more and it sure seems like the home plate to center field direction was to the southeast.
If Swine or someone can check the date, I have a signed baseball so old that many of the names are hardly legible, but it was hit by Bob Thorpe. Also on that team, and the only other person’s signature I can read, was Jim Lehew.
Ray Winder’s direction was Northwest to Southest. I-630, which runs east/west, was just behind the stadium. There was about a 50-foot high wire fence that went from the right field foul pole to center that kept balls from landing on the interstate.
Yep. Ray Winder faces SE. So do Dickey-Stephens & Baum.
Sunday attendance is generally down at most SEC parks. Students don’t come as much. It’s just never as big as Friday or Saturday at Baum.
I didn’t read “packed” to mean filling every chairback seat plus another 3k behind left field. Maybe that’s what the OP meant, but I didn’t take it that way. I accept Clay’s numbers as accurate. However, a couple of things about this series we just finished with UF are things that would’ve had well above our average Sunday attendance, IMO. One, the beautiful weather. Like anyone, we have better crowds when the temps are in the 70’s & there’s no chance of rain. The church crowd might miss the first pitch for a noon start, but they’d be on hand by the second inning. Two, it’s not that often we have such a good matchup. If we were ranked #4 & had #2 UF visiting us, we’d have been well above 7k on a Sunday afternoon. At least I believe we would. I’d bet it’d be closer to 9k. That’s more than seating capacity, but less than we can “pack” into the place.
Aside from the NCAA weekends, I don’t know that I have ever seen more than about 8,000 at Baum on a Sunday. The crowds typically are more in the 6,000 range that day, even for notable SEC series.