The Reds drew 26,223 fans for yesterday afternoon's game against the Mets, pushing their season attendance "to a Great American Ball Park record 2,371,103," which passed the "old record of 2,355,259 set in the stadium’s inaugural season of 2003," according to Steve Watkins of the CINCINNATI BUSINESS COURIER. The Reds still have three home games this weekend against the Pirates to raise the ballpark record, "but they won’t be able to break" the all-time franchise attendance record of 2,629,708 set in '76 during the "heyday of the Big Red Machine." The Reds rank 16th in MLB attendance with an average of 30,854. The team will finish "with only 80 home dates," but still should "end up near 2.5 million and averaging more than 30,000 fans" (BIZJOURNALS.com, 9/25). However, Reds LF Ryan Ludwick said, "Coming over here, I heard about how big a baseball town this is. We’ve put a winning ballclub out there. This is a good team. When we went to Pittsburgh, they had an advantage. (Fans) were loud. A playoff atmosphere." Ludwick said that he "had an epiphany of sorts" yesterday when, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, he "heard a woman in the fifth row behind the home dugout, loudly taking the fans to task." The woman reportedly said, “We have a great team and our fans f------ suck." Ludwick said that a "Mets player raised similar issues Tuesday night." The player supposedly said, “You guys are in the middle of a pennant race and no one’s here. What’s going on?" Ludwick: “I might be calling (fans) out. But I’m calling them out in a positive way. We want loud and energetic. It’s like a natural Red Bull. We need every positive aspect we can to keep this thing going" (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 9/26).
