Fans turn out in record numbers for first two weeks
NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball has enjoyed a record start to the season with fans flocking back to the ballparks.
Through the first two full weeks of the 2004 season, the average attendance was 31,223, an increase of 4,105 fans per game over last season, the league said Monday.
It is the highest average attendance over the opening two weeks since detailed data was first recorded in 1980.
The only other season in which the average attendance over the first two weeks topped 30,000 was in 1993, when an average of 30,436 fans attended games.
MLB drew a total of 5,651,347 fans through Sunday's games, an increase of 15.1 percent over last season.
The increase can be traced to several attractive early season match-ups and milestones, including Barry Bonds assault on the all-time home run record and the first series between bitter rivals the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
The Yankees and Red Sox closed out their much-hyped series on Monday with a Patriots Day matinee attracting 35,027 fans to Fenway Park.
That brought the four game series total to 140,224, the second highest for a series at Fenway Park.
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