Rays draw their largest home crowd since 2016
Fans finally showed up to cheer on the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field, as 32,251 people were in attendance for Game 3 of the ALDS against the Houston Astros.
It was the Rays' largest crowd since June 17, 2016, when 40,135 fans showed up for a game against the San Francisco Giants that featured $5 tickets to fundraise for victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting.
The Rays thumped the Astros 10-3 to send the series to a fourth game, which will be played at the Trop on Tuesday. Shortstop Willy Adames was pumped to see the stadium booming.
"The whole season we were expecting something like that," Adames said, according to Josh Tolentino of The Athletic. "I'm happy that everybody came and (showed) support. I'm expecting that for tomorrow, too."
Tampa saw just 1,178,735 attend games at Tropicana Field this season for an average of 14,734 spectators, according to ESPN. It was slightly up from 2018, but only the Miami Marlins had worse numbers.