Top three reasons fans at MLB playoffs are a terrible idea

Neutral field? Not so much, MLB

Which brings us to how this MLB playoff bubble isn’t going to be anything close to a neutral field.

For starters, typing MLB playoffs has been a bit of a misnomer to this point. Because it is just the NLCS and World Series that are choosing to open doors to fans. The ALCS, which is to be played at Petco Park, will not be doing do. Granted, this might have more to do with the policies of the state governments of Texas and California than anything else.

Regardless, by the time the Fall Classic rolls around, fans will be in the stands to watch it.

Apparently, we are supposed to believe at this point that the denizens of Globe Life Park will accordingly split into fifty-fifty camps for AL and NL representative. Or perhaps be so enamored with the gift of live baseball, that they will just politely applaud from beginning to end.

Certainly, that is a mathematical possibility.  Likely to happen though? Not so much.

No, what is more likely is that a one-sided hellstorm of angry Houston Astros defenders is going to cheer for whoever plays the Los Angeles Dodgers. What is more likely is that either New York Yankees fans will buy all the tickets, or a vast majority will turn out just to heckle the Yankees. That the Astros themselves make it through, and baseball fans unite to try to bring about their reckoning.

Or maybe everyone just cheers really loudly for the Atlanta Braves, because Ronald Acuna is awesome. Much more loudly than they will for Minnesota or Oakland.

Bottom-line, the neutral field concept is laughable. In the case of some prospective matchups, laughably so. Think the Boston Celtics might have a problem if the NBA decided to start selling tickets to local basketball fans just in time for the rest of Eastern Conference Finals against Miami? Or what about the Nuggets, if they all of a sudden had to fight off LeBron fans and the Lakers themselves?

It’s just not a fair ask, when the only advantage for MLB is whatever revenue they can garner from a maximum of fourteen games of ticket sales at reduced capacity. Particularly when you consider those earlier points, and the fact that the AL and NL clubs won’t be on an equal footing. The AL team will be fresh from their own bubble, whereas the NL club in the World Series will at least have had the NLCS to work through some of the initial jitters of having fans in the building again.

Again, it’s amazing that the season is on track to be completed. For one season only, the spectacle of watching sixteen teams chase a championship should be quite the sight.

But it should be a sight fans are watching safely from home- not in person.