Baseball fanatics

Sorry for my lack of recent blogging; I know most (er, both) of my fans must be disappointed. I've been to New York, Chicago, and Baltimore, and tried to train the dog not to run away. (No luck there.)

In Baltimore, I went to a Red Sox - Orioles baseball game. I was there with a friend of mine, who is a Red Sox fan. Over the course of the game, I noticed a remarkable thing. There were lots of Red Sox fans there.

That sells it short, though. There were LOTS of Red Sox fans there. The attendance was somewhere around 36,000 people. I would estimate that about 25,000-27,000 of those people were Red Sox fans. (Think about that ... so much for home field advantage.)

And, based on my highly unscientific survey, I estimate that 20,000 of those people traveled from the Boston area to come to the game.

This makes some sense. There aren't many seats left at Fenway in Boston for the restof the year. And, even if you do have a ticket, you may have to pay $100 for parking.

The largest convention ever in Baltimore, at least as of 2003, was the Baptist convention, that brought in 50,000 people.

But the Red Sox come to Baltimore 9 times a year. And I'll bet the Yankees bring a whole lot of people another 9 times a year.

Looks like the biggest tourism event in Baltimore might just be Red Sox games.