Even the announcers mocked the Rays’ poor playoff attendance after the crowd started booing

The Tampa Bay Rays made the wrong kind of history on Tuesday when they hosted MLB’s smallest playoff crowd (in a non-COVID season) since 1919, and the crowd for Wednesday’s Game 2 wild-card matchup with the Rangers wasn’t much better.

It was so bad that even ESPN/ABC announcer Sean McDonough was working jokes about the poor attendance into his commentary.

One day after falling behind in the three-game series to Texas, another poor start left the fans at Tropicana Field in obvious frustration. The fifth inning started with Corey Seager reaching on a fielding error. And when Robbie Grossman singled two pitches later to move Seager over to third, the boos sounded at the Trop. Seager would later score in the inning.

That set up McDonough for this joke about the crowd.

Now, a sub-20,000 crowd is always going to be an embarrassment for a playoff game. But let’s not pretend that MLB did the Rays any favors with scheduling midweek day games for the playoffs at an awful stadium with a notoriously difficult location to reach. At the same time, though, the Twins haven’t had a problem filling Target Field for day playoff games.

So, excuses only go so far.

But it really had to be bad for McDonough to joke about the crowd as announcers typically play up the atmospheres for playoff games. Fans also had thoughts about the commentary.