Due to a posponed game the Yankees will have a doubleheader today. I believe it is a two ticket game.
And it got me thinking, are one ticket admissions to a doubleheader a thing of the past?
That would be my dream. All day at the ballpark with a single ticket admission.
Have you ever been to one? If so, when?
I went to a couple back in the 1980s.
They are pretty much a thing of the past; MLB isn’t gonna give you anything at half price anymore. I seem to recall one or two have been scheduled in recent years, I believe by teams with poor attendance, like the Rays, as something of a promotional effort, but that’s about it. A few traditional doubleheaders will happen here and there to make up for rainouts, but even makeup games are, whenever possible, played as day/night split doubleheaders so they can charge admission twice.
They do them from time to time. Here’s the announcement of one of themfrom this season. The game was in August.
Teams only add doubleheaders if a game is rained out. They are never scheduled in the beginning of the season (to increase income, obviously). A day-night doubleheader (two admissions) is more common, but sometimes it’s not logistically possible.
I did go to one years ago. The thing was that we didn’t realize it was to be a double header (it was making up a rainout the previous day) and we wondered why the game seemed to have started early, and didn’t know there’d be a second game.
Not completely a thing of the past, but much less common than years ago.
From earlier this year:
During the 1970s I attended about ten doubleheaders, all single-admission. Almost all involved the Cubs; the other was White Sox at home against the Twins. I went to maybe four more in the eighties, but none since 1987. By then doubleheaders were considerably less common. It;s also true that I became a father in 1986.
I definitely enjoyed the DHs, and I always felt like I was making out like a bandit by getting two games for the price of one (especially when I reached my teens, about 1974, and started going to games on my own sometimes, in which case I was responsible for paying for the ticket myself).
I don’t know that I would have the stomach for them now, though. Games are just too long and I have too many other things to do. Someone I know went to the Phillies-Mets game last Sunday and reported that the game took 4 and a half hours (9 innings, yeeks). I looked up a couple of the early doubleheaders I’d seen and found that the two games together didn’t last that long.
–Doubleheader games are just seven innings long in the minors, and I have seen the first games of several MiLB doubleheaders over the years, but never stayed for game 2. Just too much of a time commitment. Oh well.