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After big Opening Day, small crowd at Dodger Stadium

Los Angeles DodgersYou’ll see a lot of stories like this through the season if you’re a Dodgers fan: the size of the crowd was a secondary concern to the actual game being played at Dodger Stadium.

No doubt the Los Angeles Dodgers will be one of the most scrutinized teams in baseball this season, as pundits attempt to measure the health of the historic franchise on a game-by-game basis. This probably isn’t fair to the Dodgers’ front office — it’s pretty common knowledge around baseball insiders that the second game of the opening series is the best time to attend a game because all the amateurs are gone and the crowd will inevitably be smaller and better) — since it’s really a variation on a death watch.

So maybe it’s a little unfair for Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times to focus on a small crowd on a cold Wednesday night during the opening homestand, days before the Stan Kasten/Magic Johnson/Guggenheim Baseball group is slated to take control of the team and Dodger Stadium. True, fans may be punishing Frank McCourt a little for last season, but the team’s off to a good start — 5-1 — and there’s certainly optimism about a restoration of the Dodgers as an MLB flagship franchise and the possible renovations to Dodger Stadium.

The real test will be the gravy months of June and July after Magic has had time to to work his magic and Don Mattingly has proven whether the Dodgers can be a consistent winner. Until then, monitoring attendance on a nightly basis isn’t the best way to cover a sport where change is measured in months and years and sometimes decades, not days.

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