Wednesday, November 11, 2015

CARE TO GUESS THE NUMBER OF FANS WHO HAVE ATTENDED INDEPENDENT BASEBALL GAMES SINCE 1993?

Miles Wolff and the other original investors who introduced modern day Independent Baseball back in 1993 should take delight in this number: 133,648,422.

Have a clue what it means?

That is the number of people who are believed to have attended an Independent league game these last 23 years. Yes, nearly 134 million.

David Kronheim of NumberTamer.com has meticulously come up with this number, based mostly on reports to official league statisticians with some supplemental reports, where necessary, from a few teams and leagues that did not send their attendance figures in to authorities. Actually, if every person could be counted from every league, including those that started and quickly disappeared, the number would be somewhat higher.

The top season, based on Kronheim’s diligence, was 2007 when 8,484,921 noses were counted. The total has ranged from almost 6.2 million to more than 7.1 the last five seasons through the stability of the established leagues. This year’s count has reached 6,318,729, which is about 150,000 ahead of one year ago.

ROSTER OF PLAYERS GAINS A NEW NAME

Major league teams are beginning the march toward settling their 40-man rosters prior to next month’s Winter Meetings with one new name from the Indy ranks.

The New York Mets promoted left-handed pitcher Josh Smoker, who was signed out of Rockford, IL of the Frontier League in 2014. Smoker is one of 23 onetime Indy players now with the coveted 40-man roster slots. This does not count half a dozen players who finished ’15 in the majors, but have now declared free agency. That group is made up of LHPs Craig Breslow Rich Hill, Scott Kazmir and Joe Thatcher, RHP Jerome Williams and 2B Stephen Drew.

While tracking numbers, 37 Independent players were active on major league rosters during the past season. That is four fewer than 2014’s record of 41.

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