NEARLY 140,000 SAID TO CLICK TURNSTILES AT LMB LIDLIFTERS

Attendance numbers looked good for last week’s Mexican League opening games, with a total of 139,439 reported to have attended the LMB’s 16 home openers in eight two-game series between March 16 and 18, good for an average of 8,715 fans per game.

The largest crowd was in Monterrey, where the Sultanes drew 17,582 attendees to their tilt with the Mexico City Diablos Rojos as Monterrey, Mexico City, Saltillo, Puebla and Yucatan all drew over 10,000 fans for their openers. The smallest reported crowd was in Minatitlan, where the Petroleros hosted Veracruz in front of a cozy gathering of 3,000.

While attendance figures for the northern teams were higher than their counterparts to the south, at least one longtime observer of Mexican baseball has registered his skepticism. Former University of Texas-Harlingen professor Jim McCurdy, a native Texan who played semipro ball south of the border before embarking on an academic career, says one contact told him that while Reynosa reported a crowd of 5,409 for their opener against Nuevo Laredo, that number looked inflated. Another contact in Nuevo Laredo told McCurdy that while the box score of the Tecos’ game with the Broncos reported an even 8,000 in the stands, “no way” were that many fans there.

McCurdy reiterated his concern that drug war violence would affect attendance for border teams, adding that other northern LMB cities are now dealing with the same problems.