St. Louis Cardinals: Expected fan attendance numbers increased

Earlier this year, the St. Louis Cardinals tried to estimate the number of fans that would be able to attend games in 2021. Now, that number is going up.

Unlike 2020, the 2021 MLB season will have fans in the stands once again. While St. Louis Cardinals’ fans are eager to show their love for the newest Cardinal, Nolan Arenado, the number of fans allowed in the stadium is still not pinned down.

Earlier this winter at the Cardinals’ Winter Warm-Up event, Bill DeWitt Jr. went on record to say that the team expected “8,000-12,000” fans at Busch maximum before 100% attendance was allowed. This range of fans wasn’t (at the time) expected to be the case at the beginning of the season either. At that time, COVID-19 numbers were still high and the Blues were letting in just 300 fans per game down the street.

12,000 fans were believed to be the most because of the geometry of the stadium. If there has to be social distancing between fans, there are only so many configurations that the ballpark can be set up in. While 12,000 fans are better than nothing, the hope for more will always be there.

Now, better news is here.

As you can see in the tweet from Fox 2 Now’s Martin Kilcoyne, the range of fans to be allowed has been bumped up a little and so has the timeline.

The Cardinals officially confirmed this report on Thursday morning and plan on having 10,000-15,000 fans on Opening Day. With the three months the Cardinals have had since the previous estimate, they may have found ways to better orient safe pods of seats.

No matter the reason why the expected number has gone up, it’s fantastic news to know that fans “up to 32% capacity” will be in attendance as early as Opening Day.

We are still a little more than a month away from the home opener but are less than a month from Opening Day. There is baseball on TV every day now and things are getting closer and closer to normal.