The air has grown chillier and even colder winds are coming, but as Monday, there are only 140 days left before the baseball season starts up again.
So perhaps there’s some warmth to be had in hearing that Atlanta is a pretty good baseball town – not just pretty good, but the fourth-best in America to be fan.
Take that, Chicago!! Yeah, you've got two teams and one is World Champion and the other has won a World Series more recently than the Braves, but as a baseball town, see, you barely make the top ten…!!
This is all courtesy of calculations made by the folks at WalletHub, a personal-finance website that also dabbles heavily in list-making.
To decide the best places for fandom, WalletHub compared the 361 largest U.S. cities with at least one college or professional baseball team across 25 key metrics. They include average ticket price to stadium accessibility and the "performance level" of the team (or teams, in the case of Los Angeles, New York and yes, Chicago).
Number one, sayeth the list-makers, is New York (Uh-oh, their credibility is already suspect). Second is St. Louis, reasonable enough despite the rumbles of rivalry. Third is Los Angeles but fourth is Atlanta – just ahead of Boston. (Guess a recording of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" beats a daily chorus of "Sweet Caroline.")
So let's leave aside for the moment, the somewhat awkward question of rating Atlanta as a baseball town when there is no longer a major league team in Atlanta.
So, how did Atlanta do on the WalletHub version of sabermetrics? According to WalletHub, Atlanta ranks:
— 2nd, on average ticket prices
— 6th, MLB Stadium Capacity
— 15th, the performance level of the major league team
— 113th, on the performance of area minor league teams
Persuaded? Should Atlanta be higher? Maybe number one?
Or maybe Atlanta should be down near 30 (like Richmond) or 46 (Albuquerque) or 60th (that would be Zebulon, N.C.)?
If you question the ranking, keep in mind that WalletHub is based in Washington, D.C., which ranks 21st – just behind Philadelphia, where fandom is a blood sport, and just ahead of San Diego, where watching baseball is what you do when it's too dark to surf.
It's also possible to question the company's baseball bona fides. After all, the last time a team from Our Nation's Capital won the World Series was 1924.
A smug chuckle here. After all, the Braves have won twice since then.
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