1:45 p.m.
With media buzzing over the deserted game, Camden Yards may as well have been setting up for a playoff game, with all 92 seats in the press box full. TV camera crews lined the field and are stationed outside the ballpark.
But the grandstands are as vacant as they are in the offseason.
The usually teeming concourse was barren and the concession stands selling $15 crabcakes, $6.50 crab soups and $8 canned beers were locked up.
And those signs cautioning fans to “Watch Out for Batted Balls” were pointless for a day.
12:10 p.m.
Managers of the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees say players in a closed-door game in Baltimore will have to adjust from their usual habits of feeding off a crowd.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi and Rays manager Kevin Cash say the atmosphere will certainly be odd.
Said Girardi: “This is going back to the days where just your parents showed up on a cold day.”
The lineup board in the Orioles’ clubhouse says it all: In the attendance section there’s a round “0” in orange marker. Just beneath it under “total attendance” the number read 299,598, an average of nearly 33,300 fans through nine games.
Cash, whose team was visiting the Yankees in New York, said teams “sometimes feed off the opposing crowd when you’re going in an opposing city.”
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12 p.m.
Being locked out of Camden Yards didn’t stop a small gathering of Orioles fans from peering through a fence beyond the bleacher seats in left-center field.
One Orioles fan yelled: “Let us in!”
No such luck.
While watching batting practice from about 450 feet away on Eutaw Street, fan Larry Marsh said that he wishes he was inside, but thinks officials did the right thing in closing the game. He says: “I’m just going to stand here and watch as long as I can.”
The game is believed to be the first held in an empty stadium in the 145-year history of the major leagues.
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10:30 a.m.
Only one gate to Camden Yards is open, allowing media in to watch the Orioles play the White Sox in a game fans aren’t allowed to attend.
The press box is nearly filled 3 1/2 hours before the scheduled first pitch on Wednesday.
While all other gates are locked, a grounds crew is prepping the field to ensure this one-of-a-kind game will actually be played.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says the league’s adjustment to rioting and looting around Camden Yards takes into account the safety of the people who would be in the stadium and competitive issues.
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8 a.m.
The first crowdless major league game will have plenty of viewers on TV and online.
MLB has made the Orioles-White Sox game being played Wednesday in an empty Camden Yards its free game of the day on MLB.TV. The streaming service will carry the game for fans outside the Baltimore and Chicago markets, where the games will be televised.
Broadcasters WPWR-HD in Chicago and MASN-HD in Baltimore are producing the games and will have to adjust to the lack of ambience normally highlighted to give viewers at home a sense of atmosphere.
Baseball officials decided to play the games behind closed doors because of a wave of looting and rioting around Camden Yards that broke out amid tensions between residents and police. The turmoil prompting a citywide curfew came hours after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody.
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