Anaheim is the eighth best city for baseball fans and Angel Stadium is the fourth most accessible Major League Baseball stadium, according to a new study.
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Personal finance site WalletHub.com's “in-depth look at 2015's Best & Worst Cities for Baseball Fans” is based on rating 272 of the most populated U.S. cities across 11 key metrics, including performance level of each city's teams, average ticket and minimum season ticket prices, stadium accessibility and more.
Whatever the final American League West Division standings show, Anaheim can still brag about beating Oakland, which finished as WalletHub's ninth best city for baseball fans. Anaheim's Team & Performance Rank is 10th and Costs and Fan Engagement Rank is 18th.
The best city for fans, according to WalletHub, is St. Louis.
Sorry, Dogs, the site has Los Angeles way down at No. 42. And when it comes to stadium accessibility, the only one worse than Dodger Stadium is Yankee Stadium in New York City, the WalletHubbers claim. The Blue Crew also ranked 24th out of the 27 MLB teams in Friendly and Engaged Fans. Surely the Bryan Stow incident did not help.
Then again, WalletHub has Boston's fans as the friendliest and most engaged in the game. Engaged, perhaps, but friendliest? Really?
Other local cities represented on the overall best list for MLB fans are Fullerton (82) and Irvine (213), while Long Beach is at 216th.
Finishing ahead of Angel Stadium for best accessibility are Nos. 1-3 Cincinnati, St. Petersburg, Florida (home of the Tampa Bay Rays), and St. Louis respectively. Another AL West rival is right behind the Halos: Rangers Ballpark in Arlington (Texas) at No. 5.
Orange County is represented in another WalletHub specialty section: Highest Season Ticket Price for a College Baseball Game. Fullerton, the home of the mighty Titans, finishes tied with Baton Rogue, Louisiana, at No. 44. The most expensive, at No. 48, is Columbia, South Carolina, while the least expensive in the country is Baltimore, according to WalletHub.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.