Paying fans will enter an MLB stadium for the first time this year at tonight’s Game 1 of the NLCS between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
The venue will admit up 11,500 fans for all NLCS and World Series games, which MLB hopes will serve as something of a case study before trying to bring fans back across ballparks next season, as Bryan Seeley, MLB’s senior VP of investigations, compliance, and security, explained to Yahoo Sports:
“I think the real impetus here is actually to show that we can hold events safely, to put in protocols and execute those protocols and kind of demonstrate that we can bring a limited number of fans back as a prelude to hopefully doing that in more places next year, which is obviously extremely important to our business model.”
Stadium security at Globe Life Field will enforce a “three-strike” policy regarding face masks, with fans receiving two warnings before an ejection. MLB is requiring mandatory mask use for fans except when actively eating or drinking at their ticketed seats.
